


Honesty, Industry, Prudence

by meanoldauthor



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Childbirth, Death in Childbirth, Female-Centric, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Nursing, Slavery, cut content based, italics heavy, legion-centric, side story to ongoing series, they go away i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-07-11 12:23:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7051234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slaves of Caesar's Legion are all but invisible. Most use it to avoid punishment, but the clever might turn it to their own gain. A rare few, through a roll of fate, might gain unexpected influence on the Legion itself. </p>
<p>Caesar's Priestesses are the only women held in any regard among the Legion, and even then only as caretakers and nurses to children. A mysterious and select group, their influence seems to go no further than the Temple doors. However, one lucky slave sees beyond the safety and softness of their work--and into a far deeper potential.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She hadn't watched the bloodshed. She had pressed the children, the women, the old, back against the tents. Said look away, look away.

When the legionary orders them to witness, she turns. Men are on crosses, or bloody and beaten. The warriors who didn't fight, the cowards, knelt along the road. The ranking Legionary, a coyote pelt on his head, raised his machete and said, _you have served us well. But you will be Legion. You will become us, and be stronger for it._ Or some other words, empty promises of being better than they were, as they had promised the Twisted Hairs would be equals as they conquered the Arizona wastes.

Two of his men stand beside the first warrior, not touching, waiting to see if he will resist. The legionary takes the blade, hacks the hair from his head, leaving ugly tufts and bloody scrapes. The warrior makes no sound, but she can see the blank horror in him, feels tears in her eyes. She can pick out the knots, the twists, the tokens, the braids, _this is who I am, these are my deeds_. They are cast aside into the fire, and the burning-hair reek fills the camp as the legionaries shear them.

One of the last, a scout, stands before the Legionary. Rather than let them take the record of his life, he raises a knife of his own, cold fury on his face. He throws it on the fire himself, and the man in the pelt nods. The scout looks away at the approval, meets her eyes. There is pain there, pleading, even if it is brief.

She takes a lock, hanging beside her face. Even at such distance, he knows what it is, knows what it means when she tears it out by the roots.

When they come for the rest, she forces herself to be calm.

_We will be fine,_ she tells them, making her no less of a liar. _We will find a way free._

She faces forward as they grab her head, pull fistfuls of hair and slice it free. She tries not to sob as they do. They drop it on the ground beside her rather than burn it, perhaps sick of the smell. She looks at it, a part of herself lying dead, her history cut away, leaving her bare, a rootless thing.

They are made to march. She tries to help the weak ones, but the legionaries cut them down rather than let the group lag. They reach a town their warriors helped them capture, now orderly, militant, filled with the men who walked under the sign of the Bull.

They are sorted. The healthy men, the boys old enough to fight are taken away to tents. She is left with the young, the old, the women in a fenced paddock. They are ordered to strip, and one woman who refuses is struck so hard she does not rise. The rest comply. One by one, a Legionary with a book examines them, checks their teeth, their eyes and hands, asks _what skills have you?_ When it is her turn, she tells them she is a healer, a storyteller. He makes a mark in his book and locks a collar around her throat.

He leaves, but a guard stays on the gate. Others come, carrying clothes, water, but they are greyed out shells of people. They give them more of the rough clothes they wear, say _do not fight, do not raise your eyes. Obey your orders. Do not be seen._

She can feel the men outside the fence looking as they pass, and covers herself. A red X is painted on the front of the rags.

The vague shock does not break until days have passed. Men come to look at them. Some women are taken away, and she sees them working in the town, over fires and carrying burdens. Others disappear. One man comes for her, says _you are a healer, you will do work_. 

She asks where they are going, and is struck. _Slaves do not question orders_.

The building she is taken to is filled with rows of cots. Only a few are full, but the men in them are legionaries, wounded. An older woman in slave garb leans over the nearest. She looks up as they approach, meets her eyes. Her guards leave her.

"You're the new one," she says, her voice a dusty, creaking. "Come. Show me your knowledge."

They stand over a Legionary, his leg bloody, the bone crooked, unconscious. The old woman has a set of tools, scissors and knives held in a roll. _Cut his throat_ , she whispers. _Kill them. No one is watching._

The old woman looks up at her. She frowns, but there's a gleam in her eye. “We can't do that. Some healers we would be.” She beckons her to lean close as she unwraps the legionary’s leg. “Not your first one. They'd never let you back. Choose your battles. Save your deaths for the ones you know deserve it.”

She works in the barracks for a week, two, lives in an enclosure near the animal pens. They are taught _honesty, industry, prudence_ are the concerns of a slave, are taught snatches of pidgin Latin, the history that paints Edward Sallow as a god. Around her are slaves, people of tribes she does not know. She watches over the children who huddle in the corner, makes sure that get their fill, tells stories of the Twisted Hairs when none of the Legion can hear.

The old woman, Jaffer, is at her side during her work in the infirmary. On the tenth day, a man is carried in by his brothers, mauled by some creature. Jaffer takes one look, tends to him slow, far too slow for a man bleeding to death. She holds pressure on his wounds, tells her to hurry, he's dying, because the others are watching and she can say no different.

His wounds are stitched as well as they can manage, and he is left for the night, the floor is dusty with spilled healing powder. She looks to the old woman, who gives that quiet smile. “No matter how long you toil here, how long you sell yourself to survive, you will never forget the face that helped butcher your tribe.” She spat on his body, clipped one of the stitches on his neck and hid it in a rag. Blood trickled, too slow to kill outright, but enough. “He lost too much already, poor thing. Won't survive the night.”

Aquilina thinks of the scout, and the man who is _Vulpes Inculta_ , and watches the blood run.

When the legionaries come the next day, Jaffer spreads her hands, bows her head. “It was the will of the gods.”

***

She is taken from the town, brought with other slaves deeper into Arizona. None are of her tribe. They are the same mix that the Legionaries look down on, men unfit to fight, women, children. One of them cries, screaming for her mother. She carries the girl, even if she fights a stranger’s comfort.

There are people here, ones neither slaves nor legionaries. They watch as the group is led through town. _New batch,_ they murmur. _We could use them._

They are picked through by the legionaries one last time. They debate over her, _she still carries herself too proudly. I would not trust her if I was ill._ But another waves him away. _We need all the healers we can get._

She sees the rest stood before a crowd, calling numbers, holding coin. The man leading her away asks, _have you any name?_

All she can see is her hair, cut from her and laying in the dirt. _None._

_Someone will name you eventually. You will answer to ‘slave’ until then._

Her duties are the same as before, largely. She tends the men's injuries, tends to the slaves when they retire to their shelter beside the barracks. It is open on three sides, inviting wind and what little rain they receive. The desert nights are cold, and she takes ragged, ruined blankets from the infirmary to hang over the openings.

She wakes to the sound of them tearing. The legionaries demand to know who hung them, and she speaks up before any others are harmed. _Me, and only me. They are filthy things, I thought they would not be missed--_

They drag her from the shelter and remove her shirt. In sight of the other slaves, they beat her back with a lash. _Theft is neither prudent nor honest,_ one says when they are finished. She kneels in the dirt, arms wrapped around herself, teeth clenched and refusing to cry out. _A slave may only act when ordered. Mend them and return them to the infirmary._

The others draw her back in, brush the healing powder that clings to her mortar and pestle into her wounds. They offer to help her, but she shakes her head, picking up the needle that has already tasted the blood of their men. _I will fix this._

She stays awake through the night, working knots into the thread, into the weave of the blankets. Any of the Twisted Hairs would throw them in the fire rather than risk them, reading curses, illness, bad luck. As it is, another of the slave women sees, and asks. In the dark, the night, back too sore for her to move, she counts them out. More come to listen, murmur and hide wicked smiles.

One says, _more, teach us more. The men can't read this._

Something hot and bright is in her chest. She shows them a bastard mix of trail markers, once done in rope and cord, and what hair knots she can manage in thread. She teaches more each night, and her pupils pass them on, the slaves knotting protection into their clothes.

She nearly laughs one day in the infirmary, the first time since her capture. A man has had a tunic mended on the sleeve, the knots for _stupid_ bound roughly into it. She does not recall teaching it, and feels pride and longing for her lost sisters.

***

She is shaken awake one night, after the wheals on her back are scarred over. She gives them an indignant look, then drops her eyes at the shape of a legionary. _How may I serve?_

 _Are you a midwife?_ There is clear panic in his voice, and it is delicious to hear. He all but drags her to a low pueblo home, rather than the barracks. Not a place for the fighting rabble, but an officer, a lord.

He is inside, unarmored, with a bearing of importance despite worry on his face. He looks through her, tells his subordinate to _see to it._

_It_ is in the bedroom upstairs. A woman lays on the floor, a stick-thin girl hovering over her. She takes the Legionary by the arm, says _Place her on the bed, for god's sake._

He protests, the centurion did not want the blood--

She looks him in the eye. “Put her on the bed or I will personally curse your skin to rot and your eyes to fester.”

He recoils, but scoops the woman up and lays her down, as though she will break. He stands by the door, and she glares. “This is no place for men. Leave.”

_The centurion--_

“OUT.” She lifts the woman's skirts. He takes one look and flees.

She questions the girl, what has she done to help? How long has this gone on? She hovers, fussing at sheets and mopping the lady's brow. She is just the housemaid, she had no knowledge, but the centurion's wife has been laboring since noon.

“Mother, what is your name?” she asks, looking down at her. Her tunic is simple and brown, but finer than a slave's. It is stained with sweat and blood, her face pale and glazed.

_Aurelia,_ she murmurs, and the healer shakes her head. “Your real one.”

Fresh tears are in her eyes, and she abandons Latin. _Sound-of-Rain,_ in the Painted Rock tongue. She starts to sob openly, _I do not want it, a girl who will suffer as I have, a boy who will be made a monster, let me die, and the child with me._

As she pleads, she can only hear Jaffer’s voice. _Do not kill the first one, or they will not let you back. Choose your battles._ She shuts her eyes and begins to work, closing her ears to her voice.

She reaches for the child, feels a limb. Her heart sinks. Breech birth, that killer since the Old World’s old world. The maid hushes the mother, wipes her brow and whispers encouragement. She cries aloud at every contraction, every time she presses her belly or reaches to shift the child. _Kill it, if it is born alive, don't let--_

“Mother, Sound-of-Rain.” There is blood, too much blood. “I swear on my life no harm will come to it, now or ever.”

It is near dawn when it ends. The boy is ashy and limp, but wrinkles his face as she cleans the mucous from his mouth, begins to squeak. Tears rise in her eyes, the mother weeping. Would it be kinder to smother the thing, tell the centurion the birth was too hard, took too long…

_Save your deaths for the ones you know have earned it._

She holds it to the woman's breast. “Let it nurse, it may slow the bleeding.”

She refuses to look at it, but lets her position the child. _They will take him to the priestesses,_ she says. _Before he is even weaned, they will take him away, make him forget me. I do not want to remember him. I do not want regret._

“Who are the priestesses?”

_Caesar's whores,_ she spat. _Women who feed the children to the Legion. Groom them to fight, or breed them like brahmin._

She checks the bleeding, finding it slower, but the woman is pale and shaking. “What will you name him?”

_I will not. I will not love it._

She bows her head, gestures to the maid. “Go to the men. Tell them…“ Her hands are covered in blood. “No. Go to the women. Ask if there are any with a newborn. If not, tell them to find flowers, herbs, for a woman who can't nurse.”

There is a knock after she leaves, one of the men asking if all is well in the silence. She calls back, patience, her work is delicate now.

Her work is giving her peace, watching the mother's arms go limp, hearing her last breath. She closes Sound-of-Rain’s eyes with a touch, rests her hand on her brow. She swaddles the child as it whimpers, whispers, “You are not mine, little one. But I will see you safe. “

She takes the child to the living space, holds it out to the centurion. “Your son will be a fine warrior. I have read it in the blood of his first kill.”

He grieves for his wife, but it is for the loss of a _thing_ rather than love for her. He orders her taken from the infirmary, to live in his home and tend the child. No nurse can be found, and there is a frightening day that she waits for him to return. She tries to give it bighorner milk, brews teas for herself and kneads her breasts. The maid stays in her kitchen, peeking around corners whenever she dares.

At last, the next day, she has a trickle of something to give that won't fall right out of the boy. The centurion stands over her while she nurses, appraising the child. _Will he live? He is strong?_ She nods, discreetly drawing a cloth over her breast as he watches. The child feels her tension, fusses. _What name have you, slave?_

“I was given none, sir,” she says. “I have had no owner, just worked in the infirmary.”

He _hmms,_ reaches out to touch the boy’s face, far too close to her. He turns away and whines, and the centurion draws back. _Aquilina, I think. I considered it for my wife, so it is fitting you bear it as you tend my child._

“Yes, sir.” She tries to hide her repugnance.

***

The centurion meets with his officers there some nights, discussing the state of the region and their men. The maid, Nona, carries food back and forth, invisible. Aquilina sits in the kitchen, putting together plates for the two of them out of the scraps. The baby frets, and she tries to bounce the discomfort out of him.

The other woman sneaks back to sit with her on her bedroll in the kitchen, share bits of crust and gristle. Nona shuts her ears to the men's voices, says it's no business of hers, but Aquilina listens, fascinated.

Caesar is moving into the Utah. He is taking New Mexico, taming huge swathes of land. New slaves are rolling in, nearly more legionaries than they can train. The centurion will relocate closer to the frontier soon, and be promoted. The others slap him on the back, congratulate him. One has brought liquor, contraband taken from one of his men. They share it out, passing the bottle. He will be assigned a new wife when he arrives, and even though they express condolences, they make leering noises at the women out of sight. Nona almost drops her cup.

“You have been here longer,” she says, distracting her. “What does such a movement mean?”

She looks glum. _Forced marches. Camping. Lean meals, saving rations for the fighters. We’ll all be a disorganized mess, vulnerable. They won't touch us though, we belong to a commanding officer. The others will get no warning, poor things._

“We know.”

_We can't pass gossip like that._ Nona frowns. _Prudence, woman. What if we're found, selling the centurion's words?_

Aquilina nods, as though agreeing. Her fingers toy with the bare threads on the edge of the baby’s blanket.

When he is gone, overseeing his men the next day, Aquilina goes into town. She carries a basket covered with a cloth for her wares, and along one edge is a repeated pattern, dark thread on the light. _Travel soon. Gather and forage._

A few of the others spot it, eyes raised to hers for just a flash. She pretends nothing is different, making stops for food and medicines, paying with the coin they are left for such things. Her route takes her past a slaves’ shed, alongside a storehouse. A rag-wrapped head sticks out, and a slave beckons her in.

Aquilina checks the road, but there are no men to see. She steps into the shed. “What has happened?”

A man is laid on his back, a woman hovering over him. _He works with the smiths,_ she says. _He sliced open his hand, it’s gone sour. I'm afraid we need to cut it off._

The bandage on it is foul, soaked with pus. The man in feverish from the infection in his blood, writhing where he lies and not responding to her questions. She grimaces, tells them to find hot water, clean cloths. The first, a younger man, rushes to the kitchens, stammering thanks.

Aquilina wipes at it with what scraps are clean enough, pulls out the precious roll of tools she hides in the waist of her rags. His hands are wrinkled and leathery between the streaks of infection, a workers hands. He rouses enough to draw away as she begins to cut and drain, and she orders the woman to hold him down. She digs through her basket, turning up bread, and salt. Herbs to brew, for the baby’s fevers. When the slave returns, she grinds them together, pressing the hot mash against the wound. He groans, and the baby at her breast whimpers at the noise.

There are footsteps behind as she binds the dressing. A hand grips her shoulder, jerking her backwards. _None of you are permitted here at this hour. You are to be working._

She turns. A Legionary frowns down at her. “Tending this man, sir,” she says, moving to kneel rather than rise. “He is badly wounded.” There is knotwork on the edge of his skirts, mended by a slave.

_He was a fool and injured himself, and was left to die if he could not tend it._ His eyes dart down, noting the infant, who she must be. _The legion does not need clumsy slaves._

“He is old, has had time to hone his craft. Valuable. Would Mars not be displeased, losing hands that help protect his soldiers?” From the corner of her eye, she sees the other slaves flinch.

The Legionary sneers. _If you were not the centurion’s newest purchase, I would beat you for that, woman. What does a slave know of what Mars desires?_

“He knows of the contraband you hide in your tent,” she said, still looking down. “The chems and liquor. He judges men harshly, who dabble in such things.”

_How do you--_

“He may forgive, if you abandon your ways. I will dispose of them, quietly, if you bring them to me.”

He takes a deep breath as he faces her, and whirls to strike at the other slaves. _Get back to work! Return to your stations or I’ll see you crucified,_ he spits, storms away. The baby watches her as she looks down at the dirt, seems to return her smile.

The woman grits her teeth, the younger man holding her up. Her cheekbone is red, promising more colors, more pain. _How did…?_ He watches her sidelong, uncertain.

Aquilina offers her a rag, dipped in the cooling water. “More and more are carrying marks like his. I can teach you if you wish.”

_Keep your witchcraft_ , she says, pulling her companion away. _I fear enough for my life already._

***

The camp rouses over the next week, the men reorganizing and preparing to leave. A few contuberina were remaining to hold the town, one of the men promoted in the centurion’s wake. It passes Aquilina by, safe enough in the home, dozing on a mat while the baby sleeps. Nona is curled up at her back, the room too small for two bedrolls.

There is a knock at the door, and she groans, throwing an arm over her head. Nona pats her side and steps over her to answer. She waits for the boy to cry at the sound, but he is mercifully quiet. The whispers outside are heated, and she sighs and sits up as Nona charges into the boy’s room. _Aquilina! They--_ She gestures for her to lower her voice, and she cringes as the baby stirs. _The new decanus and his men. They’ve hurt some of the slaves, badly. Wanted to prove they were in charge…_

Something in her goes cold. Without a word, she slings the boy at her chest, digging a bundle of chems and alcohol out of his blankets. The other slave is crouched in the doorway, hiding from any passing legionaries. _I am sorry to risk you, ma’am, but you’re the only one I know who…_ He waves his hand, wrapped in a bandage. _I wish I could repay you with something other than more work._

She nods, teeth clenched, and gestures for him to lead.

There are three of them, two women and a man. She tries not to think of why it was done, the lashes, bullet wounds, worse. To prove they were stronger. To prove they had power. To prove they were above the weak, the helpless…

There are other slaves in the tent, who she directs to hold pressure and give sips of water, whatever comfort they can. Their faces are tight, tense, flinching at shadows. They know the same will happen to them, were they caught away from work.

_Avoid them, the ones who are staying._ It goes through the group in murmurs, terrified the words will pass through the tattered canvas walls. _Don’t be noticed. Don’t raise your eyes. Don’t give them anything to object to._

She wipes her tools down with the alcohol, hides the empty Med-X syringe in a pile of garbage. One of the slaves takes her arm. _You have to get rid of those. It won’t matter if you’re with the centurion. Everyone says you’re risking the rest of us, defying them._

Around the tent, _Industry. Honesty. Prudence,_ they whisper, like a prayer.

A clarity came over her, then. She had to take a deep, slow breath to tamp down the fury in her. Instead of meekly whispering obedience, meekness, subservience to the next, she took her words where they needed to go. She kept her eyes down as she left to cross the camp, hiding the rage in them, wearing the centurion’s child like a shield.

The next night, a brace of biting snakes are found in the decanus' tent. He died of the poison, and his second will lose his leg. There is an eerie quiet among the legionaries as they break down the camp for travel. The centurion looks troubled, staring at the wall as Nona places his breakfast before him. There are whispers in the air, Were the gods displeased, for such a tragedy to strike?

The slaves with errands near the men's tents will swear they saw nothing, will have thrown the heavy gloves in the fire before they are found. They have already filled in the pitfall near the kitchens that keeps the snakes from seeking out the warmth. She told a woman whose Viper tattoos are only mostly scalded away to keep from sight for a time.

In the stillness of the morning Aquilina hummed to herself, bundling diapers and blankets and toys for travel.

Let them blame the gods. They do not need to know _her_ wrath is what they should fear.

***

_Aquilina, hold._

She tensed, setting the baby’s things outside his room, turned to face the centurion. He looked her over as he approached, holding his son to her breast. _He has thrived in your care,_ he says, leaning forward. Aquilina leaned back only slightly, eyes down. _Tell me, have you been with any of the men?_

“I have not, sir,” she says, holding the boy a little tighter.

He rubbed at his chin. _The priestesses have use of women such as you. Caesar’s temple has offered to buy your contract for a considerable price. I should ask them to raise it, if you are still pure._

She nodded, hid the set of her teeth.

_You have served me admirably, Aquilina, but there is no need for a wet-nurse and infant on the front lines._ There is something in his voice, paternal, patronizing. _I would enjoy having you at my side were it not in the boy’s best interests to go to the temple._

It is said in such a tone of _favor_ that she felt ill, could taste bile in her throat, but said, “Thank you, sir. Pluvius has been a pleasure to care for.”

He cocked his head at the name. “His mother’s wish,” she said smoothly. “If you find it unsuitable, he is not old enough to answer to it yet.”

An indulgent smile, a wave of the hand. _He will earn a name for fitting of a warrior in his training. For now, Nona will help you stow your things on the caravan to Flagstaff._

“Yes, sir.”

The walk to the road is slow, not a word between them. Nona carried the baby’s things, waving her off when she offered to help. Aquilina found the cart they are assigned, and stands alongside. ”You can come with. Be gone before he notices.”

Nona shook her head, tying the basket into the cart. _I wouldn’t risk it. He would be furious if they sent me back to him._

“I could tell the priestesses you were too valuable to me,” she said. “That I couldn’t have raised the boy without you.”

She smiled at her, but it faded as she looked at the child, face scrunched as he gnawed on a little wooden gecko. _I’m useless with children. They’d find out right away._

Aquilina nodded. She had expected no less, but her heart was heavy for it. “Here.” She pressed a cloth into her hand, a headwrap with knotwork along the edges. “It’s not much. But for what safety it might provide…”

She unfolded it, speechless. There were tears in her eyes as she looked up, took her face and kissed her on both cheeks. _Years, since anyone just gave…_ Aquilina held her shoulders, standing with their foreheads touching, hidden from the bustle of the caravan by the covered cart. “I’m safe enough with him,” Nona says. “I know what he expects of me. I can use that, as you did. Shelter the others.”

“Be kind to her, whoever his new wife is,” she said, stepping back. Nona’s hand lingered, holding hers. “A woman who can put a word in the centurion’s ear is near to a general herself.”

The supply train headed to the capitol is slow, leisurely after the memory of her march east. Aquilina rode, comfortable, the legionaries gave her uncertain and sour looks, on foot. As a slave, she should walk. As a slave to the priestesses, she was untouchable.

She cradled her charge and carried herself like a goddess.


	2. Chapter 2

The road grew fuller as they neared the city. There were as many troops as mere...people. Aquilina watched them, waiting at the side of the road for the Legionaries to move through. There were shipments of stone, balks of timber, civilians and slaves alike swarming about them. Strings of brahmin and bighorner. Slaves, walked in similar ways.

There was a murmur as they rounded a bend in the road. She stood on the back of the cart to see, letting out a long breath at the sight. Flagstaff’s outskirts were mere rubble, casualty of the Old War, but people thronged through the ruins. A skeleton rose from the broken buildings, a wall, a barrier to rival the mountains beside the city. She knelt, the baby crying at the cart’s jostling, her own heart hammering at the sudden rush of it all.

The wall loomed over them, the gateway standing open. Their caravan was given a wide berth, the fighting men repelling the crush of traders and travelers. Aquilina could only sit, waiting for orders, cradling Pluvius and trying to breathe evenly at the frantic motion and incredible sound.

She watched the crowd as the road stretched into the city, and they seemed to watch her back. A ripple went through them, like tall grass being parted, and a figure stepped forth. The Legionaries bowed their heads as they passed, as much a refusal to acknowledge as it was one of honor. The newcomer swept down the line until one of the men pointed, and they turned to Aquilina, face hidden under a hanging veil.

Their head was high, loose white robes shining in the sun. A red shawl was pinned on their shoulders, a golden clasp holding it in place. _Her_ shoulders, _her_ robes, as she sees the shape of her, the figure under her dress. Her breath caught, and Aquilina stopped staring long enough to look at the ground, as a slave should.

She walked beside the cart, close enough that Aquilina could see her sandaled feet beneath the hem of her robe. “You’re the new one? With Valerius’ boy?”

“My contract was bought by the temple, madam.” The caravan came to a halt, and she slid off the back of it to stand, eyes still lowered.

“Then goodness sake, you can look at me,” she said, and there was a softness in it. “Are these his things?”

Aquilina reached for the bundle, but she had already moved. “No, you already have the baby. You’ve done enough lifting and carrying by now.”

She could only follow, bewildered. The crowd parted for the woman, but was less mindful of the slave behind. The tide of them nearly swept her away, until the priestess reached to take her hand. She looked back, but her face was still veiled, inscrutable, the bundle resting on her hip. “It’s not far now. You were from out in the wastes, weren’t you? This must be overwhelming.”

Her hand was soft and cool in hers, a point of focus in the city. “It is incredible.”

“You'll get sick of it soon enough.”

The crowd broke, passing a complex of similar looking buildings. The most intact bustled with robed women, a solid mass of brick and golden stone pillars. Legion colors, even for a building. Guards stood at the corners, or patrolled the paths between them, and Aquilina looked away.

A structure had been raised in the road before the main Temple, a shelter of glass and steel. A flame burned on a plinth, three of the priestesses on their knees, hands held in an attitude of prayer. One stood apart from them, watching the crowds, aloof. A citizen approached her, a woman with a baby. She held it up to the priestess, who dipped her hand into a pouch. She drew a finger on the infant’s head as it squalled, leaving a V of ash; bull horns.

She faced Aquilina as the woman left. Her weight shifted on her hips, head tipped. “Are there women so lazy they must have a _slave_ bring their child to blessing?”

Her guide stiffened, looking over her shoulder for listeners. Aquilina smiled. “Only men so hopeless they force us to raise them.”

A sharp “Ha!” from behind her veil, and her posture softened. “You are our new sister. I feel I will be pleased to have you.”

The first priestess led her inside, past slaves holding infants, gaggles of children. The youngsters watched her, flat-eyed, and the priestesses seemed to measure her, veils cast over their shoulders. She took her upstairs, through halls and colonnades, empty shelves set up as walls in the larger areas. The noise and confusion set Pluvius to crying, and the priestess waved her into a room. “Here, this will do for now,” she said, sitting on the edge of a ruined desk. “We’re still renovating this wing, it should be quiet. Let the babe settle and I’ll start.”

Aquilina nodded, taking a seat in the proffered chair. She bounced and cooed at him until he was calm enough to nurse, settling into a rhythm. “Is it always this chaotic?” The room was still full of debris, trash, Old World detritus.

She lifted her veil, smoothing it back to frame her face. Aquilina couldn’t look away; she may have been Twisted Hairs with her color, cheeks plump and well fed, her smile enough to send a flick of pain through her chest. “You caught us on a quiet day.”

 _Drusa_ , she called herself, a minor priestess. She told her of the priestess’ duties, to teach Caesar’s laws to the next generation of Legion. The temple slaves, who tend the infants, cleaning, cooking, mending…

“Everything you’ve already been doing, really. As a newcomer, you're looking at two nursers, a tot, and your girl. She might even age out soon, we have a lot who are old enough to marry. We've got babes to spare, so I hope you're good on both sides. Might get you a third if any of them take to the bottle, and bighorner milk.” Drusa leaned back with a leg over the other, hands clasped on her knee. “We evaluate all our people as well, see if you have skills to teach the other women, or have what it takes to be a priestess.”

Aquilina nodded along, feeling the flood of information slip through her fingers. Drusa made good on it all, and before night she sat in half a room, a curtain separating her from another woman. She was given another infant to nurse, a girl with hair so pale and fine it looked like cobwebs. Her ‘girl,’ Lucia, was curly-haired and surly-faced, but was biddable and changed diapers with the efficiency of a mother many times her age.

Days became rote. Her world was that room, those children, leaving her too exhausted to be curious about the larger Temple. A toddler was brought into her care, some tribal child who babbled in a tongue she did not know, who cried when she held him. She learned names, faces; the woman on the other side of the partition was Mel, of a mighty belly laugh, whose toddler peeked under the curtain and giggled. Lucia was withdrawn, serious, warming slowly as they played with the children, shared food and stories.

The priestesses called them to gather in the main hall at night, to preach of Caesar and his ways. Latin was taught daily, words written on great green boards as an older woman pointed along with a stick, the gathered women echoing them back. A few times a week, they were taught histories. Aquilina listened to the priestess speak of him, the Son of Mars, sent to rebuild the world that the great god cleansed with fire. Mel sat beside her, laughter turned to silence. Her toddler had been taken, put into a creche under a priestess, old enough to talk and run and be taught the ways of the Caesar’s warriors.

Aquilina listened to one of the lessons, frowned. She leaned close to Mel, “Only ever Caesar. I have heard him called Edward Sallow.”

She stiffened. “By who?” she hissed.

She adjusted the girl on her chest, watched Pluvius sitting up, cutting teeth on a toy. Lucia was listening but pretending not to, rolling a ball between her and her toddler “A long time ago,” she said, low. “I may be confusing things.”

“That’s right,” she said, letting a breath out through her nose. “I like you. Be a shame to see them take you away. He is the Son of Mars and our lord. Nothing less.”

***

The centurion’s son continued to thrive, starting to babble and walk and run. The priestesses in their red and white nodded as they looked over the growing children, seemed pleased when he scuffled with the other boys. The toddler, yet unnamed, was examined by them. In her care, he had grown calm, steady, answering in Latin when she called him. They thanked her for her service, took the boy by the hand and led him away to a creche. They appraised her as well, asked her about the Legion teachings, if she was familiar with tending the older children.

She weighed her answers, gave the right ones, rather than the true. Caesar is the Son of Mars. His Legate Graham is his right hand, the hand of God. The tribes under his order are made powerful with their primitive trappings cast away, ending the moral dissolution across the wasteland. The place of his men is to fight and die for Caesar. The place of his women is to tend his men and bear more warriors for the Legion.

Cold words, measured words; the ones the priestesses wanted to hear. They asked if she had tended bighorner, and she says yes. The next day, a gaggle of girls followed her from the temple to the scrubby pastures outside the growing wall, a pair of the temple guards trailing behind. The girls had made the trip more often than she, and laughed and chased as they herded the ewes into a paddock.

Aquilina took up a bucket of her own, kneeling beside an animal. It plucked at a weed as she milked, the warm smell of its hide in her nose, the sound of the herd familiar. She remembered Dry Wells, the Twisted Hairs’ animals. Peeking over the back of one, meeting dark eyes, framed with knots for _hunter_ and _scout_ and a smile. She had shooed him away, _You must know more of the animals than I do, mooning about here._ Looked to her work, back up to see a token of woven bighorner hair left on its haunch.

A favor, a question.

Aquilina rested her head on the animal’s side, felt it breathe, its heart, letting it ground her. Remembered him standing in the firelight, head bare like a man in exile, felt the old tired anger twist in her gut. One of them now, Caesar’s dogs, a murderer and traitor. Better to hate than to regret.

Lucia nudged her arm, took the full bucket and replaced it with an empty. Pluvius stumped along behind, holding her skirt. The fair-haired child was quiet at her breast.

***

Aquilina was told to pack her things, and those of her wards. Mel kissed her on the forehead, and her new toddler hugged at her legs. “Air’s thin up there, love,” she said. “Keep your wits about you.”

“They’ve never made you a priestess, after years here? Even a teacher?” she said, Pluvius’ hand in hers.

Mel threw her head back in a laugh. “This room is the safest I’ve even been, love, even before the Legion came. Ambition attracts politics, and politics paints a target on you.” She bounced the child at her breast, drawing up a giggle. “Give me babies and a snug temple. I’ve survived enough to earn it.”

Drusa waited at the door, took her free hand to lead her along. “The more senior women are pleased with you,” she said. “We’re going to need more priestesses soon, and I put your name in for consideration.”

“More?” She thought of the size of the building, and every corner full. “They’re establishing more temples, elsewhere.”

Drusa nodded. “Phoenix, Many Farms, Twin Mothers—we’re arranging to send women to all of them, to take in the tribal children and tend the legionaries’ get. They’ve tried to send as many as possible here, but the Legion is spread too far.”

Pluvius and Lucia chattered behind them, and she kept her voice low to ask, “Will you be leaving?”

“I’ll be staying, my dear.” She squeezed her hand. “Did I tell you how I came to this place?” Her smile was impish when she said no. “I was married to one of Caesar’s officers, pregnant by him. He sent me here to bear the child and give it to a nurse before returning and start all over again. But the High Priestess knew the odious little man, and bought my contract from him, personally. Sent a message back that I had caught a disease from him that—” she glanced back at the children— “—well, I’m certain it doesn’t bother the ghouls it comes from, and was best confined to the temple. I hear it put him in a rather tight spot, after.”

Aquilina hid her laughter in her hand. “As well, Septima has found me too useful as her assistant,” Drusa continued. “At this point, it’s not worth her training another woman. In the Temple I stay.”

“I am glad for it,” she said, before she registered the words. But Drusa smiled, still stepping in time.

She led her to a roomful of girls, had her stand before them as she spoke. Told them the creche will be Aquilina’s now, to mind her orders, listen close to her lessons. They listened, silent, whispers picking up slowly as she turned back to Aquilina. “They’re all well-behaved and bright, shouldn’t give you trouble. Your boy, though…”

Her throat closed when she had to say goodbye, and he only looked up, too young to fully understand. Pluvius was taken to live with the boys his own age, learning the letters of Caesar’s law from another woman. They were kept in loose groups of eight, contuberina, made to run and play-fight, being built into warriors with missing milk teeth. She caught glimpses of him in the boy’s groups, as she went about her way, growing tall and strong. She swept aside her heartache—the boy was never hers, and there was no room in the Legion for sentiment.

Lucia stayed at her side, helping with the pale girl. The ones in the creche were younger than she, and she gave them weary looks as they squabbled. Some were born to legion, and sat attentive and blankly watched the tribal girls who still cried for their mothers. She comforted them, told them how their place in the Legion was as a family. Few accepted it, but realization eventually set in, or hopelessness. They fell quiet, only speaking when spoken to, echoing her lessons.

 _Those of the Legion live only for the Legion,_ she told them. With hair cut to stubble, wide staring eyes and clothes that were little more than sacks, they looked like poorly made dolls. _Our men will die for Caesar in battle. Our women will die keeping them fighting. No single soul is important, but that we enact his will as one._

_As slaves, you will practice honesty, industry, prudence. If you become wives, your duty will be fidelity, obedience, diligence. You will bear the next generation, regardless..._

The words were ash in her mouth. When no other women were there to hear, she showed them, take a wrist here, dig your nails into tendon and he will lose his grip. Break his nose with the heel of your hand, not a fist. Legion men are proud, proud. They will never admit it was a woman who hurt him. Run to the others, to safety. Have them hide you.

Lucia gave her a narrow-eyed look as she told them such things. Aquilina bit her tongue, feared she would run to the priestesses with her defiance. But she smiled, privately, and let her speak in peace.

***

The girls’ creches were set to the temple’s tasks, rotating through bighorners, cooking, and washing, mixing medicines and mending clothes. Hers followed close behind as they went to the wash-house, balancing bales of laundry on hips and heads, avoiding the gaze of the guards on the road. More groups flocked beside them, priestesses and slaves standing like trees over the field of dirty white smocks.

They swarmed the building along the reservoir, old and tumbledown, the front wall fallen or scavenged for brick. Metal barrels and other vessels were lined up inside, and the smaller girls took buckets to fill them. The older girls lit fires beneath the tubs, the smoke escaping through the missing wall and gapped ceiling. Aquilina helped the newer girls to sort, leaving the dirtiest for last, showed them how to keep the fires to a low hot smolder. She turned, ready to beckon Lucia for more wood, but there was an empty space at her side. Looking out over the crowd, she counted, but her assistant was absent. Instead, she tapped the shoulder of an older girl and passed her the light-haired child, then stalked between the kettles, lips pursed.

A crumbling wall partially hid one last drum, and the smoke around it was fragrant. There was a splash as she rounded it. Lucia froze, a rag half-out of the water, naked. Other women look up at her, unclothed, hair wrapped in damp cloths. Drusa passed a cigarette to the woman beside her. “Your girl says you’re teaching off of rote.”

“I am,” she said, refusing to be cowed. “They’ll still learn to serve, but not to be used.”

The other women nodded. They were young, old, six of them together. Some she recognized as slaves, but some must have been priestesses, their faces unfamiliar. The oldest of them patted the space on the wooden beam beside her. “Leave your clothes in the water. They’ll just smell of smoke, make the others suspicious.”

Aquilina shed her things and sat. Her hair was kept too short to need covering, just a thin curl over her scalp. “We’ve been seeing things like this out on the eastern fronts,” the old one said, passing her a scrap of cloth. It was knotted on the edges, _protection, fair weather,_ and others too mangled for her to read. “You came from that way, what do you know of it?”

She fought the pricklish feeling of eyes on her, vulnerable, stiff. What did they want to hear? Ignorance, denial that she was complicit? To tattle on the others like a child, that they could send messages the Legionaries couldn’t trace?

Lucia offered her the cigarette. Aquilina took it, pre-war and stale, and drew a mouthful of smoke before speaking. “It is of my tribe. Markers and signals. I taught the other slaves, to curse the men and communicate between ourselves.”

One of the younger women snorted. “Did it work?”

“No man fell ill, but not for lack of trying.” A few chuckles, a murmur of agreement. “But we spoke through them, yes.”

The old woman beside her leaned forward. “How might we learn?”

***

The fair haired girl began to crawl, then walk. Lucia asked to name her, called her Ava, gave the boy that replaced the weanling a nonplussed look. Her girls grew taller, more studious. Some were placed with older women as Lucia was to her, the rest joining larger groups to learn the ways of wives and workers.

The priestesses watched her as she taught the girls, ghosting up to her door to listen. From the corner of her eye, they nod, murmuring to each other. One crooked her finger after Aquilina set them to mending, and she stepped out, bowing her head. “How may I serve?”

“We are pleased with what we have seen, Aquilina.” The one woman smiled. The other was silent behind her veil, but she had a faint smell of cigarettes. “The high priestess would see you, to speak face to face.”

They swept her into the highest levels of the building. She was the only one in slave garb, the others in the halls watching her curiously through veils, over stoles. Her guides gestured for her to wait outside a door, and she lowered her head to the infant at her breast. Beneath her brows, she watched the others, listening.

 _…wishes to see the next generation of warriors who serve him?_ Her ears prick up. After so long among women, the man’s voice was a growl, unwelcome. _You cannot allow the Son of Mars to walk through a building that smells like shit._

“Of course. We live in his debt,” The other voice is female, creaking leather and old wood. “It will be seen to, consul, should the Imperator grace us with is presence. Now, let one of my priestesses escort you out, it would be a shame for you to smell so foul yourself.”

Murmured pleasantries, farewells, and there was a knock from inside the room. The other priestesses stepped through doorways or scrambled to lower their veils. One of her guides opened the door, and a man brushed past, head high. He gave Aquilina and the infant a distasteful look, stepping briskly.

The women watched him go, still, silent. When his footsteps faded, one of them threw back the gauze on her face, strutting down the hall with her nose nearly pointed at the ceiling. “Ooh, _I_ can’t be smelling of dirty diapers, not Consul Manilus. Septima! Make your babies stop shitting this instant!”

The rest erupted in laughter. Another joined her, hands on her hips. “A _baby?_ Where _I_ can see it? Caesar’s name, make it grow up and be _useful_ already!”

The laughter faded as a figure stepped into the doorway, and the priestesses look anywhere but there, seeming to suddenly remember errands quite far away. Aquilina stole a glance, but froze like an animal at the eyes on her. “This is your new offer, Drusa?”

“This is Aquilina, High Priestess.” The veiled woman bowed her head. “I believe she will be a benefit to us.”

The old woman looked at her, tribal ink faded on her skin, eyes narrow and sharp enough to pierce the soul. “We shall see.”

***

Septima, the High Priestess, saw all the newly veiled women together to learn names and faces, assuring herself they knew their lessons and had earned their status. She sat in a padded chair as spoke, gnarled hands on the end of a cane. She told them their new duties, of record-keeping and coordination of the slave women, of placing the children correctly. Seemingly tired from so many words, she nodded to Drusa, who showed them stacks of carefully bound papers, how to keep their records, listed off traits and temperaments they must record.

“The fighting men have the final say if a boy will be a legionary or a slave,” she told them, “but you will forewarn them of any problems or unsuitable behaviors. The girls, however, will be sorted according to the records you keep. It is vital they go to their best place. The Legion cannot afford healers who fumble, and cannot waste healthy wives in hard labor. As well, they are more productive in places they are suited. Give them the comfort of doing something they are skilled in.”

It was callous work. Aquilina was reminded only of the Twisted Hairs’ bighorners, carefully assessed for health and hide before being culled or bred. Her pen hovered beside the girls’ names, agonizing, forced to decide what form of slavery they would be condemned to.

Lucia grew taller, filling in, face maturing from softness to angles. Septima met her priestesses as a whole, to talk of forthcoming lessons and the function of the Temples. “We’ll be bringing some adult women in for reeducation, to become wives to the ranking men,” she says, stopping to cough. “The girls who have served you were noted early as good wives, but we do not have enough, and many are too young to bear children,” she told them. “But under you, they have learned to assist and stand beside someone, as they will their men, and are loyal to the Legion.”

Lucia just nodded when Aquilina asked her, grave. She knew. Sitting on the floor, Ava holding her fingers as she tried to stand, she said, “I have a year or two, Drusa says. And I won’t go into it helpless. You’ve taught me things, and the other women who meet.”

She was so young, so serious, that Aquilina knelt to gather her up in her arms. Lucia held her back, face pressed into her shoulder to hide her tears. Something hardened in her heart.

It had, in truth, spared her life to serve the Legion, to serve it and abide by its ways.

Aquilina would spend it all to bend it to her will.


	3. Chapter 3

Aquilina continued her work. Ava cried as she kissed her forehead, carried away to a creche. The infant was placed with the other boys as soon as he could walk, freeing her hands and quieting her nights. Septima assigned her a handful of the women being “reeducated.” They were tribal and town-bred, selected by the slavemasters in the field, bewildered and uncertain in their change of fates. She kept her face impassive, meeting in the evenings to give them lessons, histories; comforted them when it sank in that there was no going back to their lives before.

Her days were filled with her class of girls. Their faces had changed, her original group aged out to join other women, one, twice, until they all run together into a mass of staring eyes and clasped hands. She had to check her list of names as she gave them direction, notes scribbled alongside to tell them apart.

Every third week found her in the far end of wash-house, the six other women sharing news and support. Their names were slow to be revealed, their roles in the temple. As they came to trust her, they relaxed, and Aquilina marveled at the range of them. Leonia, who ran the kitchens for the Temple as well as the men’s barracks. The temple gardens were kept by quiet, sharp Regula.

Columba, the oldest of them, was always last to leave. Aquilina paid it no mind until she forgot the clasp to her stole by their meeting place. When she returned to fetch it, she froze at the sight of a legionary, hesitating with a hand on the clasp rather than dropping her eyes. Across form her, Columba placed a finger to her lips before raising a scarf over her face, with the gold trim of a temple guard, settling a decanus’ helm over her head.

“I’ve heard through the caravans, Caesar is coming back to Flagstaff from the front. Calls it his _Progress_ ,” Carina said, who bartered with the traders for their goods. “There’s some news on our Western front, but I can’t figure out what. It got his attention something rare.”

“Official messengers came through today, to the consul,” Drusa said. “A scout found some Old World relic, a dam, and a strategic city nearby. He’ll be mounting a full offensive.”

There was a moment where all that could be heard was the slosh of water and crackle of fires. “He’ll be bringing all our boys with him,” Maura said, who oversaw their training.

Drusa let out a long sigh. “There are a million things to do to prepare…”

In the days leading up to Caesar’s Progress, the windows were left open, fresh air setting up drafts and clearing out the smell of habitation. The children were distractable, hanging their heads out the windows on the upper floors, pointing at different parts of the city and the people below.

Aquilina rapped her chalk on the green board in their room. “Audite, puere,” she called. They shuffle back into their rows, sheepish. “If you accidentally poison a sick man instead of curing him, you’ll find no sympathy from me,” she continued in Latin. Beside the door, Lucia smiled down at her sewing.

She drew herbs and flowers on the board, pointed to the ways they were identified, had the girls echo back their names and uses. She passed around dried samples, letting them feel and smell. “They’ll change, depending on the region you’re sent to, but we keep stores of seeds to grow the hardy ones on the far reaches. If you’re lucky enough to have any local tribal slaves in your group, ask them, ask them. They know more than any about the land you’re on.”

Lessons were given on comportment and conduct, and she made her girls line up and bow, as they would during the procession. “You will not speak to him or any of the men unless they approach you first. You will not look up if they do. You will not use Caesar’s name, to you he is _Imperator_.” She paced through them as they stood in rows, patting them on the arms to square their shoulders and stand up straight. “The Malpais Legate will stand at his right hand, and will be referred to only as _Legatus_. His guards are _Praetor_. Any of his officers will be addressed as _Dominus_. Who will list for me the ranks of the men?”

To her adult students, she says somberly, “You are not helpless. The slavemasters chose you for pleasant faces and healthy bodies. Use it. Your man will not look past those unless you give him a reason, so give him none. Keep your ears open, be discreet with how you speak to your slaves. The knotworks may be your only voice between yourselves, and in the right hands can reach anywhere in the Legion.”

She helped Lucia with the last stitches on her dress, tying _luck_ and _safe passage_ and _protection_ into the hems. The women in the wash-house were grave, passing a small bottle of liquor instead of a cigarette the day before the Progress. “Your coming husband is not a pleasant man,” Drusa said. “He has a reputation for running his men hard, never mind the noncombatants under him. Caesar doesn’t care for anything but expansion, but even the towns he has captured are nearly destroyed by his carelessness. I’m sorry, it feels cruel of me, but you’re the only one of the girls strong enough to stand up to him. …”

Lucia nodded, face set. Aquilina tipped her head. “ _You_ place the wives?”

She gave a wry smile. “Septima does. She has records on all of the ranking men, for the sake of marrying off the girls. But you’ve seen her hands, she can’t hold a pen, and her _eyes,_ though she hides it well.” She took a sip of the alcohol, passing the last in the bottle to her. “We have so many names to keep in line, I can’t be faulted for mixing one up now and then.”

Aquilina held it, not accepting the drink. “You would doom her to him?”

The other women looked at each other. Drusa was unfazed. “You’re new here, as it goes. But ours is a patient game, Aquilina. Trust us.”

She considered the dram left in the bottle. Lucia caught her eye, and nodded.

All six of them relaxed as she drained it dry.

***

The Temple was in uproar the next day, women trying to shepherd their wards into order. The boys’ groups stood in orderly ranks, ready to march out and line the road for Caesar’s approach. They stared at the girls, who stuck out their tongues when the priestesses looked away.

The women worked their way through the oldest groups, the ones who would leave with the Legionaries in Caesar’s company. On their foreheads, they drew the bull’s horns in ash, a prayer to Mars spoken over each. Aquilina gestured to her girls to stay put, stopped one of the priestesses with a hand on her arm. “If I may, one of the boys…”

She nodded, giving her shoulder a squeeze. She took the pouch of ashes as the boys watched, shuffling their feet nervously. Aquilina spoke the prayer over them, anointed them, moved on.

Her voice was soft as she came to the last in line, and she rested her hand atop his head a moment longer. “You will be of great things, Pluvius, son of Sound-of-Rain and a centurion. You were nursed at the breast of Caesar’s priestesses, to take in their wisdom and loyalty. Carry these things well, my son, and may you find victory under the sign of the bull.”

He fidgeted under the extra attention, but straightened up to salute. “Ita vero, sacerdos.”

She closed her eyes and handed the pouch back to his teacher. Her girls set up a rabble, pointing at the boys nearby and shouting, and Aquilina hurried to break them up.

The boys marched to the road, and her girls ducked their heads as she watched them sidelong. All the lower, open hall of the Temple was lined with them, the oldest, best-behaved girls near the front, the upper level overlooking it filled with the younger children, slaves ready to whisk them away if they began to cry. The crowd of priestesses at the end of the hall parted, and Septima stepped through to the center, Drusa supporting her elbow. They shuffled and rearranged themselves, a row of young women in white filing in before them.

Aquilina stood with the other teaching priestesses, at the head of each row of girls. The main doors swung wide, one of the Temple guard calling the arrival of _Dictator Caesar, Martis Filius_ , and the priestesses lowered their veils as one.

The girls bowed row by row as he passed before them, and the priestesses stood tall, hands folded, more sculptures in his wake than people. At his side was a man not in Legion garb, wearing some thick prewar vest, eyes ahead and almost bored by the procession. Two of his Praetorian Guard flanked them, more alert, even in the heart of Legion power.

Her chest clenched at the sight of them, of _him_ , smiling amiably at the gathered children. The new wives bowed before him, unveiled, and Septima only nodded her head. From the distance, Aquilina could not make out words, but his gestures, the set of his shoulders and head were _approval_ and _arrogance_ and _ownership_ , and she swallowed down bile at the nervous set of the women before him, and the ringing in her ears is a scream of outrage at how clean and bloodless their hands, he and his Legate—

Caesar turned, and she clenched her hands on each other behind her back. He matched Septima’s place as they left, the other priestesses falling in behind. Aquilina forced her breaths slow and even, one for each step, one of the women in the crowd taking her arm as she shook. “I know,” she whispered, Maura’s voice from the wash-house. “Hold strong. Hold strong.”

She rested her hand over hers, let the touch steady her. The crowd stepped through the Temple doors, arranging themselves around the eternal flame burning in the square. More of his men were there, orderly rows closing off the near streets, the mass of Flagstaff citizens behind swarming up into the ruined buildings for a view.

He stood before the flame, Legate as his side, more officers and guards at his flanks. The new wives were chivvied forward by the priestesses, filling the platform around the shelter. Aquilina moved with them, pressing Lucia’s shoulder as she stepped away.

 _Legionaries! Citizens of Flagstaff,_ Caesar called, and the crowd fell silent. _I stand before you on an auspicious day…_

She gritted her teeth and shut him out. She was in the first row of priestesses ringing them, overlooking the proceedings unobstructed. Their boys made up the ranks nearest to Caesar, and she searched through them one last, futile time for Pluvius. She turned her head slowly, discreetly, looking at the ones past her shoulder.

Aquilina’s blood ran to ice, a pit under her. A man looked out over the crowd, calculating, coyote pelt on his head still fixed in an empty snarl. _Vulpes Inculta,_ a name murmured between the tribal women, spat like venom from the mouth. He shifts as he stands, and beyond him…

The other women took her arms, whispered, _the legate, the legate_ , laced with fear. It struck at her from her days in the shelter, not even blankets to keep the wind out, every shadow a man come to beat or force or take, and she looked up to see his Legate watching her, hand hovering over his gun. The legionary at Vulpes’ side catches the tension, shifting his weight as she let herself be pushed to the center of the group, hiding her from his sight.

She pressed her hands to her face under her veil, regaining her composure behind the others. Caesar finished speaking, and a roar went up in the men. His voice wasn’t among them—Had he known? Could he have?

There was a mass tramp of feet as the Legionaries came to attention, Caesar stepping down from the flame’s raised structure onto the road. The priestesses bowed low, breaking away to return to their Temple.

***

The temple was subdued, the rest of the afternoon. Aquilina left her girls to their own devices, rather than force them to attention after such a disturbed day. She left them playing with laundry to be mended, some with handkerchiefs over their heads like veils, one in a man’s tunic that hung to the floor, demanding she be called Caesar.

The boy’s wing was near silent as she paced, and she caught glimpses of priestesses sitting in empty rooms, or leaning on one another as they spoke. Walking alone, thoughts knotting themselves in her head, she drew her veil back over her face and stepped out through a side door.

A few guards were stationed around the grounds, walking paths and standing at vantage points. Handpicked, Columba said of them, and considered a dull, gloryless duty by many of the Legionaries. She didn’t avoid them as she walked, and some of them bowed their heads as she passed. One was dozing, propped up beside the bighorner shed, facing away. Shadows had lengthened, shading into evening, and they might have been miles away in their own island of light.

She kept her footsteps light, not disturbing them. The animals recognized her, coming up to the paddock fence to lip at her robe and push their heads under her hands. Aquilina murmured apologies for not bringing treats, puffs of dust rising off them as she scratched between their horns. She crouched to reach for some of the calves, born that spring and horns just beginning to bud.

“Always were good with them.”

Aquilina stayed crouched, turning the jolt through her spine into an extra-firm scratch that made a calf grunt, leaning on her hand. She stood smoothly, holding the fence. “You dare come here.”

She didn’t look, but could feel him standing off her shoulder, just far enough not to crowd. She heard him take a breath, hesitate. “Didn’t come expecting welcome. Only wanted to…”

“To what?” The bighorner still nosed at her, and she let them, hands tight on the top rail. “You think you can salve this with words?” Silence, the scuff of a boot as he shifted his weight. “As you always have. The silver tongue that held the blade from our throats, talked your way into Inculta’s graces and me from killing him myself.” Nothing, nothing, and she turned, hands clenched in fury as he looked away. “What’s wrong? Has it turned to lead?”

He was a stranger to her, features older and rougher, another blank, interchangeable face over Legionary armor. He wouldn’t face her, eyes cast down. “I only wished to see you.”

“Then see me as I am, traitor,” she said, gesturing to her veil, the bull pin on her shawl. “ _Look_ at me, what you helped make me. _Remember_ what you did to us. The history you made, forgetting Judas and Arnold, adding whatever name they hung around your neck to follow you into eternity.”

He looked up slow, as if it pained him, eyes searching over her covered face. She stood straighter, arms at her sides, daring him to challenge, to ask her to raise her veil, to _give_ her to him.

A breath, his lips parted as if to speak. Heat rose in her chest, ready to cut him down.

He bowed, pulling up a leather hood as he rose. “Apologies for my intrusion, priestess,” he said, hiding his eyes behind a pair of goggles. “May the evening find you well.”

She stood rooted on the path, making him step around. When his footsteps faded, she leaned with her hip on the fence, a hand raised to feel her scalp, kept bare. Bare for tidiness, for the ease of tying her veil, for mourning.

For defying him, remembering as he stood close, the brass smell of the shell casing as he knotted it into her hair, a laugh and stolen kiss as she wrapped a thread from her storyteller’s scarf into his.

Aquilina’s hand smoothed at her veil as she turned back to the Temple. To her sisters, her girls, to Lucia now gone; Drusa and the other women, holding fast to each other as the Legion raged around them. Let him find another cause to traitor, something else to break. _She_ had found somewhere to build.


	4. Chapter 4

A new girl was assigned to her, as Lucia was. _Pia_ , when Aquilina asked for her name, whispered mostly to floor. Younger than Lucia had been, meeker, with hands that shook and whites that went all the way around her eyes. She tried to comfort her, draw out a smile, but all she did was turn in on herself, painfully quiet.

“One of Honoria’s girls,” Drusa said. They walked along the upper floor of the Temple, the senior priestesses’ rooms. “Stern woman, not a good fit for her. I thought you would have the patience to handle her shakes.”

“I’ve heard her name around,” Aquilina said, veil down, hiding the suspicion on her face. Her name had come up in the wash-house, a deep loyalist to Caesar—and one of Septma’s favored students. “I can’t imagine meeting her myself. Poor girl’s said about ten words in three weeks…”

“She’s…forceful,” Drusa said, opening the door to her room. Aquilina stepped in, taking in the stacks of papers, books, all lining the walls, pens scattered here and there. The door clicked shut behind them. “Here, have a seat, I—or, well…” Drusa picked up a stack of hand-bound pages off of a chair and dropped them on the floor. “There. Sit.”

“Do you know if Septima has made any moves towards stepping down?” she asked, setting down her own stack of records on her lap, safe from the all-consuming piles.

“No. She’s intent on holding the position, thinks she’s still the best suited to keeping Mars’ flame lit, in her words.” She watched a shadow pass on the other side of the door, perched on the edge of her bed. When it passed, she leaned close. “We won’t be meeting tomorrow,” she said, voice low. “Cassia, one of the priestesses.”

Aquilina thought back, a narrow-faced woman who brought the cigarettes to their meetings. “What happened?”

“The Legionaries caught her making comments against Caesar, being _seditious_ , with the other women,” she said. “Probably comforting some new transfer. But the consul’s gotten involved, and Columba isn’t sure how much he can shield her. They’ll look for leads, accomplices. We can’t be caught together, or implicate each other if we’re questioned.”

“Caesar and his circle haven’t departed yet,” she said, catching a pencil as Drusa rummaged on a the table. “Do they know?” 

“No, and we hope to keep it that way. I’’m finding excuses to meet with some of the others, but I’ll need you to tell Regula and Leonia. None of us can have contact out of the ordinary for a while.”

Aquilina shot a look at the thin door, wood so warped there were gaps at the sides. “And you called me here? You had better have a _good_ excuse, love.”

“You’re being promoted,” Drusa said, passing over a sheaf of papers. “Head of the healers. Your girls have been putting out our best medicines for years, and the women you’ve been teaching are still better in the field. You’ll be Caesar’s personal physician whenever he’s in Flagstaff, tend the other priestesses, Septima, the consul, training slaves—” she bent down, prying up a plank under the edge of the bed. “Those are your orders, the terms of your station. I threw in a handful of names, women who you might make into teachers in turn. None of them are _ours_ ,” she added, straightening. “But feel them out.”

Aquilina held out her hands, taking a stack of prewar books, covers missing, some with new ones pasted on. “These are old herbalists’ manuals,” she said, looking her in the eye. “Nothing I need up here, they just got mixed in with things. They might be useless to you, so do with them as you need.”

“Of course, priestess,” she said, taking them. She gave the first a quick thumb, seeing no images of plants, just tightly spaced words. “A little dry, maybe, but I’ll look to their worth.”

She smiled, a bit of tension going out of her shoulders. “Do you have any ideas about the slaves under you, who might take over your class?”

“Yes, a few…” she said, turning over a page.

***

As Drusa had to her, she led a woman with an infant at her breast before her class, an older girl holding a toddler on her hip behind them. _Rosa_ , the slave’s name was, who had been through four children assigned by Aquilina, raised them obedient and quiet. In the creche, the near-nameless, single-faced girls all sat with their hands clasped, listening wide-eyed as she explained the change.

Pia lurked beside her, head down, clutching the bag of their things. Aquilina gestured to her as she passed, and she fell into step. “I’ve been given one of the private rooms upstairs,” she said to her. “The older girls’ dormitory is on the floor below. Do you know where it is?”

She glanced up, down to the floor. Pia held her breath, biting at her lips, not wanting to lie, not wanting to show ignorance. Aquilina sighed. “Let me show you.”

“Yes’m,” she said, so faint she might have imagined it. “Sorry m’m.”

“You’ve no need to apologize to me,” she said, lifting her skirts on the stairs. “Answer the question directly next time. Not everyone is so patient.”

“Sorry m’m.”

She closed her eyes, counting stairs, beseeching whatever god was listening for calm.

The floor was empty during the day, the girls gone about their daily tasks. Young ladies more than girls, truly, ones singled out as wives or future priestesses, assisting the older women or in lessons. “You’ll be a little younger than the others, but they should look after you, as we all do.” She pushed the dormitory door open. “Go on, I’ll help you find an open—” The figure sitting on a bed started to her feet, and Aquilina put a hand to her chest. “Oh. Apologies, sister, I didn’t expect…”

She had her veil down, but the weave was too rough to easily see through. Aquilina frowned. The light from the window fell in narrow beams that left the rest of the room dark, but her robe was a dirty, misshapen scrap of sheeting, threadbare shawl held in place by an old nail stabbed through it. “Who are you? You’re not one of us.”

The stranger held her hands up, empty, before pulling off her veil. There was a bruise on her cheek, the angles of her face hungry and sharp, the set of her eyes harsh. Aquilina reached out, stopped, felt her heart break at the new Lucia who stood before her.

She threw herself into her arms, and Aquilina held her tight, smoothing back her curls. “Oh, my dear girl, are you alright? What happened, are you…?” She pushed her away to look at her face, still holding her arms. “Why did you come back? How?”

“I’m fine.” Her eyes were fixed somewhere over her shoulder; a lie. “I…must not have listened closely enough to your lessons. The man I was—my husband—had me make him a tea for his head. I must have grabbed the wrong plant, and…I thought I’d be safer here.”

Aquilina cupped her cheek in her hand, making her face her. Lucia stared back, forcing innocence. “Pia?”

“Yes’m?”

“Go find Drusa. Tell her…If there’s someone with her, tell her I need an opinion on a new purchase.”

“Yes’m.”

Pia scurried off. Lucia tried to step back, but Aquilina held her arm, just enough to stop her as she searched her face. “The truth, Lucia. Please. Did…?”

“I never gave him the chance,” she said. “And I ran as soon as I— once I realized he was dead. I knew I’d be blamed.”

“You know me better, Lucia. I’m no fool, so why—”

“If you’re no fool, you _know_ why.” She flinched so slightly, just a flicker of her eyes at daring to reproach.

Aquilina put her arms around her again, and she held back just as hard. Her shoulders were thinner than she remembered, the bones more prominent. “I am so glad you have returned to us, daughter, and returned safe…But they’ll be looking for you now.”

She nodded against her. “I had to hide with the slaves, sneak onto a caravan back. I can—”

The door swung wide. “Lucia?”

She let go, allowing Drusa to sweep her up. Stepping back from the embrace, Drusa set her hands on her shoulders, grave. “It’s done?” When the girl nodded, she rested her hands on her cheeks and pressed her forehead to hers. “Good girl. Brave girl. You’ve done more for us than you know, thank you. Here, we’ll find somewhere you can hide, but let’s get you fed first, you’re skin and bones…”

“Wait.” They hesitated on their way to the door, even Pia flinching out in the hall. “ _You_ sent her to kill a man?”

Dust drifted in the beams of light, the only thing to move. “I volunteered, when she—”

“Hush.” Drusa patted Lucia on the back. “Go upstairs to the storage room, get a real outfit and head down to the kitchens. Pia, go with her.”

Aquilina shut the door behind them, folding her arms as she faced Drusa. “What are you planning to do? Assassinate every man in the legion using _children?_ ”

“She’s of age in any four tribes I know,” Drusa said, arms crossed right back. “You said you would trust us. I don’t expect you to understand yet, I haven’t told you—”

“What is there to tell me? She risked her life to kill, what, one man? Watch Caesar put us under closer scrutiny now. You might make a slip of the pen under Septima, but I’d like to see you do it with the Legate watching!”

“She knew the risks when she _offered_ to go!” Drusa looked at the door, lowered her voice. “That man needed to die. He was weakening the entire region to our south, one we can’t afford to lose. No, we _won’t_ get away with it again. It was a calculated risk.”

“ _We_ can’t afford?” Aquilina stepped closer, and Drusa drew herself up taller. “Let them burn. Let their reach go so far, so thin the Legion falls in on itself. Leave us to laugh in the ashes.”

“They.” There was a bitter smile on her lips. “There is no, _they,_ Aquilina, unless you forgot the scores of children you have forged into Legion slaves.” She raised a hand, cutting her off. “Where were you from? What tribe, what region? One so influential, in one so bountiful you had no fear of famine, of the next tribe to raid and pillage, of living in squalor until you caught the gut-sickness and shat your innards out?”

“You can’t—”

“The Legion offers us safety, somewhere to grow, somewhere we finally have _power,_ no matter how small,” Drusa said. “What would you have us do? You don’t want to take a risk, but want to see the Legion fall—Tell me how that works.”

“I won’t ask a _girl_ to do my dirty work,” she hissed. “She _killed a man_ to further your ends. Look at her and tell me that’s the same girl you sent away, with the blood on her hands, that we’re any better than the men who force our boys to fight.”

“How else were we supposed to—”

“The Legion needs to _change. We_ are still slaves, Drusa, unless that’s passed you by. We’ve worked to put women sympathetic to us in high places, so we might have influence there. What good is that work if we don’t use it?”

“We _are!_ ”

“By hiding behind Septima’s skirts?” Aquilina threw up her hands. “How do we know the man who takes his place won’t be just as bad? Worse?”

“Because _we_ keep every record in the Legion! We knew who would be promoted after! _I_ knew!” Drusa put her hands over her mouth, and muttered, “And we are very lucky this floor is unoccupied during the day. We keep records on the higher-up men, Caesar thinks it’s just a list of names and ranks to pair off our wives with. But through the slaves, the other women, we have old tribes, affiliations, how they run their camps and Legionaries. We have a way to talk, thanks to you. Now we have an entire generation of boys _we_ raised, have records since they were in diapers, and can _use_ that to sway them, play alliances—we are the only kind hands they have known, and all signs are they trust us implicitly.”

“Then we have our own army,” Aquilina said. “Our own Legion. We don’t need to suffer Caesar any longer.”

Drusa stared back, lips thin. “We do. But now is not the time. None of our boys have enough influence on the men over them. The women, even the priestesses, aren’t respected enough to have a voice. We need to keep lying to the ones in charge, keep doing as we are expected to, and above all be prudent with our actions.”

“I didn’t realize you held our virtues so dear,” Aquilina said. Drusa narrowed her eyes, but let her go on. “For now, I’ll accept your leadership. Caesar is old. If the Legion answers only to his call, we shall see what happens when he begins to fail. But I will not stand idly by while you force our young women to kill.”

“I forced nothing from her. She came to me, wanting to make a difference.”

“Did she grasp every consequence?” Aquilina raised her chin. “What she would sell to buy a single change, a chance at valor? That this would be hung around her neck for as long as no assassin is put to blame?”

Drusa looked to the door, after the girls. “I dearly hope she did,” she said, voice low. She sighed and shook her head. “Those books I gave you…?”

“I haven’t had a chance to read any. What of them?”

“Burn them. Read them first if you can do so privately, but I think you doubt Caesar enough as it is,” she said. “Things are going to be dangerous here for all of us, until suspicions begin to fade. Don’t be caught with them, don’t let them be traced to me.”

“I’ll see to it,” Aquilina said. “And Lucia?”

“I’ll find her. She can be one more veiled face here, if we’re discreet.” Drusa stepped towards the door, pausing to put a hand on her arm. “I’ve put you in a very powerful place, Aquilina. You’ve earned it, so far…But everything is precarious now, even more than it was. Please don’t make me regret it.”


	5. Chapter 5

Leonia, of the kitchens, had given Aquilina a small nod as she cut through—Drusa had found her excuse to speak to her, though she and Lucia were gone by the time she collected herself. A few pleasantries and carefully chosen words to Regula, in charge of the gardens, made her set her jaw and drop her veil. She stepped away to oversee the slaves weeding through the medicinal herbs, and Aquilina clutched her stack of papers and records tighter.

There was a quiet corner of the gardens, behind the rows of maize. Some priestess before her had set a small desk against the Temple wall, the wood warped and scorched with sun and weather, shaded enough in the afternoon to be comfortable. She placed her things across the top of it, slow, deliberate, wishing she could lay her thoughts out in similar order.

She kept Drusa’s books under an open anatomy text, waiting until a slave finished picking the row in front of her. Latin, it was labeled in—how much more sense the words made now. She slid it aside, pen poised over a half-filled sheet as though ready to continue making notes.

The first book was re-bound in badly-tanned mole rat hide, the old cover ripped away. She heard the glue crack as she pried it open, and her eyes flicked up to make sure no one was close. The flyleaves were stuck to the cover, leaving it open on the title page.

_Commentarii de Bello Civilli, I-III, C. Julii Caesaris_

She nearly forgot to breathe, reading the first few pages, skimming the rest as she rushed to the next books. The covers were gone, or scorched, or water-damaged—Deliberately, by Drusa or whoever she had gotten them from, keeping them hidden. _Origines, Historiae, History of the Rise and Fall_ —Scattered volumes, with gaps in the numbers, pages fallen out. She ached at the knowledge lost, the missing chapters, even as the names and places and wars pulled old familiar strings, spoken in a voice that made her grit her teeth.

No Son of Mars. She had known, in her heart, that he had no divine right, no god-given edict, but here was a handful of nails for a coffin, for a _cross_ , to stretch an imposter’s hide to the sun.

She read until the light was gone, fragments of each. But enough. Enough.

_The will of the gods,_ had been her excuse, had been Jaffer’s, and the men had swallowed the lie whole, as they had Caesar’s. A scholar, the washouse-women said, from a place of learning in the West—a place of tomes like this, of rare knowledge and Old World words, ones the scrabbling wastelanders would hardly treasure, or even see. Words that could be twisted to a single clever man’s ends, walking history’s footsteps, superstitious and ignorant men underfoot.

The slaves in the gardens worked on into the twilight, only filing away when Regula called to them. Aquilina sacked her things methodically as they passed, keeping the battered set from Drusa separate. She raised a hand to Regula as she waited by the Temple door, and the other priestess nodded, vanishing inside.

She took a shovel leaning against the wall and tucked the books under her arm, headed away from the Temple. Debris was piled on the edge of the grounds, garbage dug out of the buildings as the Legion rebuilt it, cleared the rooms and returned them to living spaces. Veil lifted to watch over her shoulders, she set the books aside and dug, stopping only to hike up her skirt and keep the dust from it. She aimed for soft areas, full of things even the old world had considered trash, until a bit of fluttering white caught her eye.

Aquilina eased it free of the pile, a sheet of thin, stretchy membrane, its purpose lost to time. She shook the dirt free of it, wrapping the books up tightly inside. _Burn them_ had been Drusa’s orders, but the idea sickened her—she wouldn’t see more knowledge lost. A cabinet drawer shrieked as she pried it open, just wide enough to slip the bundle inside, the noise making her flinch and look for listeners. She nearly dropped the shovel in her haste to finish, weakening the rubble just below until the pile above slid down, half-burying the cabinet.

She shook her clothes back into order, stepping briskly into the rows of crops, flinching at the distant call of a guard. She ducked down between the plants, only straightening when she reached the tall stalks of maize. Aquilina dropped the shovel next to the desk, snatching up her things. There were footsteps around the corner, and she was sure they could hear her heartbeat as she pressed herself into the shadow of a shed, books hugged to her chest.

The steps paused somewhere in the garden, and she forced her breathing to be light and soft. The guard continued on, the sound of their passage headed back to the Temple’s borders.

She bowed her head, lips resting on the top of the books. The blood in her ears quieted.

Aquilina straightened, let out a long breath before heading for the door.

***

Her classes were all adults now, women with sure hands with scalpel and needle, or keen eyes and noses for the bunches of dried plants in their stores. Some were of the temple, young ladies who listened bright-eyed and obedient. Others were older, who spoke halting Latin, tribals taken from their homes to serve. She taught them of bitter drink, of Hydra, of more esoteric brews, listened to the older women’s recipes and copied them down, to research and teach the rest.

Drusa arranged for the Temple’s wounded to come to her, boys bitten through their lips in fights, slaves and wives ready to give birth, and once a Guard with a concussion from training. She showed her women how to care for them, watched them as they stitched and bandaged, how to have a birthing mother squat or kneel instead of lay back. Drusa hung back through some of the practical lessons, curious, scribbling a note or two on her papers as they worked.

A week into her new tasks, a different woman appeared, taller and broader, face strong-jawed and set hard. She stood, arms folded through the whole lesson, waving Aquilina back to her students when she gave her a questioning look. She focused on her notes, seeing the tension in her students at their table. To end, she set them to copying a page on animal bites and stings, leaving to greet the stranger.

“The consul wants you,” she said, before Aquilina even spoke a word. “He’s been occupied with other business, but you need to get down there.”

“Yes, of course, priestess…?”

“Honoria.”

Aquilina kept her back straight, staying half a step behind. Honoria didn’t look back, walking briskly. The only detail she could pick out were her ears, under the twist of her veil, the edges notched and scarred from old piercings ripped free. Maybe feeling her eyes on her, Honoria looked down her nose at Aquilina, more pink-on-pale scars marring it, and she turned her eyes forward.

She led her out onto the grounds, not pausing as she swept her veil down. Aquilina hesitated, but caught up. “Priestess, can I ask—”

“The consul wants to meet you. Are you questioning it?”

“No, priestess,” she said, biting her teeth at her tone. “I will gladly meet with him, I only wondered where we were going.”

Honoria snapped her fingers at a pair of guards at the Temple gate. One drew back, irritation in his face above his scarf, but they fell in step behind. “The Consul’s holdings.”

Aquilina waited for more, but Honoria marched on. The roads around the Temple were empty of Flagstaff civilians. The only signs of life were Legionaries marching in squads, running errands, pulling down tents between ruins-come-barracks. She kept her eyes on the other priestess’s back, the veil a shield against the curious men as they entered a building.

“…Gone?”

“The entire settlement, Imperator. It’s sunken into the earth, and the storms are impassable. We don’t know what happened, but the contingent watching the route has entirely succumbed to radiation—”

“Send for the White Sands cohort. We need their manpower.”

“White Sands?” Another voice, as they passed a doorway. Caesar leaned over a table that stretched the great length of the room. A crowd of ranking men were gathered to it, one saying, “They’ll have to march hard to get here in time for the assault. I doubt Aelius will drive his men—”

“He _will_ push them as hard as needed, and cut the weakest from his ranks,” from the legate, sending a chill up her spine. Honoria gestured for her to wait at the door, not flinching at his voice. The Temple guard stayed at her side, a skittish arm’s length away.

Mutterings from the war room, and the consul stepped clear of it, Honoria behind. “Head of the healers?” he said, and when she started to confirm. “Yes, who else. Come on, let’s be quick about this, Caesar wished to have words about you women.”

The next room down was just as large, dominated by a long table. Cushioned chairs, leather taken over by mold, had been piled in the back corner, and the consul pulled out a simpler wooden one for himself. Aquilina clasped her hands behind her back, and Honoria passed him a thin sheaf of paper. He _hmm_ ed as he paged through it, already beady eyes gone narrow as he read. “Priestess…Aquilina. How long have you served the Legion?”

She kept her face still, veil or no. “Many years, consul.”

“ _How_ many?”

She licked her lips, trying to count years out a mass of fear and pan and desolation. If Pluvius had just left as a warrior… “More than eight, lord.”

“Hm. And how long a priestess?”

Another silent scramble for time, counting classes, children, infants. “Five, consul.”

He glanced at Honoria, standing to the side between them. She nodded, faintly. He turned to another page. “In this time, you served as a healer to the other women. With no incidents?”

“No, consul. I’m afraid not every ill is curable, but none of our women have been removed from duty under my care.”

He nodded to himself, eyes down as he said, “Septima records you as a dedicated worker, but reticent. Why is this?”

“I…am afraid I will need clarification, lord.”

Consul Manilus tossed the papers aside, the topmost nearly fluttering off the table. “Reticent. Quiet. Even for an obedient woman from a crowd of obedient women, she finds you uncommunicative. Why would this be?”

She could feel Honoria’s eyes on her. “I am only a priestess, my lord. A servant, in my way. It would be unsuitable for me to voice any words not given to us by Caesar, or that do not uphold the teachings of the Legion.”

He lifted his chin. “So you harbor words that go against Legion teaching?”

“No, lord.” She swallowed the surprise in her voice, keeping it low, disappointment that he would think such of her. “Only that my opinions of trivial matters need not be voiced. I owe the Legion much.” A truth, for plausibility. “My only repayment is keeping strictly to my duty.” A lie.

“And what opinions are those?”

Honoria straightened, and Manilus rose from his seat. Aquilina followed their bow a second later, the Legate unmistakable in his old-world armor. The consul gestured weakly to his chair. “Legate Graham, I did not expect you to join us…”

“Caesar called recess while messengers were organized,” he said. Arms folded, he stood with his back to the table, giving the priestesses level looks.

“This is Priestess Honoria, Legate, head teacher in the Temple,” Manilus said, and Honoria dipped her head. “Priestess Aquilina is the new head of our healers, after Beata was reassigned to establish the temple in Phoenix. I thought it prudent to question her, after the…incident with the former priestess Cassia.”

“She named no accomplices, even if it would remove her from the cross.” Cold words, cruel, that brought memories to wake that she prayed would let lie. Words that should have come from some leering monster, not a bluntly handsome man, face indifferent to the evil on his tongue. “What are your thoughts on the issue, priestess?”

It was as though he could see through the veil to her eyes, and she dug her nails into her hand behind her back, features schooled. “Regrettable, legatus.” What would they believe? Go too far, and sound the liar… “I knew her only in passing, and she never spoke of dissent to me. While it is a shame to lose another worker, better she was removed before her poison spread.”

“Do you suspect there might be more like her? In your role, you may observe many more of your women than an average priestess.” He leaned against the table edge, arms still crossed, the motion subtle but enough to set her nerves singing. “You have an opportunity to weed out the weak links in your Temple, to listen for…opinions, on trivial matters.”

_He knew, he knew, he knew,_ but she forced her voice to be level, keeping it lower than the ringing in her ears. “Indeed, Legatus. I do not take this responsibility lightly.” Another truth, to give her words weight, “Though our women know what will befall them, if they reproach the Legion. Cassia’s final duty was to remind us.”

Oh, the fear then, watching him watch her, the consul and Honoria looking on in silence. “Remember the lesson well,” he said at last. “Caesar will see you after his council is adjourned. Your guard will escort you to his quarters. Priestess Honoria, return to your duties. Manilus, are these the numbers on your supply lines?”

Honoria stirred as he picked up the papers, but didn’t have the nerve to snatch them back. “Their records, Legatus,” Manilus said. “Nothing of—”

“Then find them. We need a count.” He passed the paper to Honoria, who bowed as she left, one of the Temple guards ghosting behind. Aquilina moved to follow. “You were not dismissed.”

She froze, bobbed her head in quick apology, mouth too dry to shape one. She was closer to the door, but it didn’t matter not here, not—

“How often do you reuse a name?”

“I don’t…” Her eyes narrowed, scrambling to find the thread. “We try not to, Legatus, for the records sake. Only so many were given for us to use, however.”

He tipped his head. “How many women do you have named ‘Lucia?”

She had to remember to breathe. “One that I know. There might be younger girls…”

“So she was older. Old enough to be a wife?” His arms were folded again, loose, the right one still an easy reach from the gun on his hip. “What would you know of her?”

_The papers…_ “My girl. My assistant,” she clarified at his look, rather than be caught in a lie. “A good girl. Quiet, but studious.”

“And trained by a healer.” His chin had dropped as he spoke, looking at her from under his brow. “She is missing, Priestess Aquilina, and her husband, a centurion, poisoned. Would your _girl_ have been so careless?”

There was a quaver in her voice she couldn’t fight. “I…”

“Graham, are you rejoining us? Or am I fighting this war without a general?”

His lips pressed thin as he looked to the door. Spine rigid with fear, legs ready to fail, Aquilina barely turned her head just far enough to see Caesar in the hall, flanked by his Praetorians. “Caesar, this priestess—”

“New head of our healers?” Belatedly, Aquilina bowed, nearly facing the ground, fist over her heart. “Have her sent to my room. We have enough to do, Legate, without you terrorizing her.”

“Caesar, I don’t think—”

“We’ve lost enough time on this Divide nonsense.” The words were light, almost playful. “ We need to move on the Dam _soon_ , and I will be very irritated if you hold us up further.” 

Graham gave her an icy look as he left. He followed in Caesar’s wake, leaving her and the temple guard still waiting beside the door.

She shuddered when he cleared his throat, finding her hands against her face beneath the veil. “Madam. I am to escort you to Caesar’s quarters.” A pause, and he shifted his grip on the belt holding his machete. “When you are ready.”

Her throat locked up as she tried to reply, falling back on a nod. The walk deeper into the complex was made on feet of lead, the rest of her adrift behind. Men lined the halls, tough and hard and lean even for Legion, steel gauntlets over their fists. Her guide spoke to them, somewhere distant, and they passed into a bedchamber.

A place of rest, if grand, too _much_ ; the bed in the corner was large and free of stains, soft hides thrown to pad the floor, the wood of the table flawless, the chair more a throne. But the room was silent, empty, and she breathed against the band holding her ribs.

A water skin appeared in the corner of her vision, and she stared at it, waiting for the threat to show itself, before taking it from the guard. “Thank you,” barely above a whisper.

“I am here to serve you, priestess,” he said, watching the door rather than her. More softly, “He wasn’t even talking to me, and I thought I might piss myself. The least I can do.”

She passed the skin back. “What is your name?”

“Attis, madam,” he said, tucking it through his belt.

“You are very familiar, Attis,” she said.

One of his boots scuffed as he shifted his weight. “Columba likes you. You took good care of Sirus when he knocked his head in that accident.” He turned to her, a strain of a smile around his eyes. “And you don’t snap your fingers at people.” Aquilina almost laughed, a breath heavier than the rest.”The men here won’t touch you. Think you’ll curse them. And if that doesn’t stop them, I’ve sworn to the Temple much more recently than to Caesar. You have my word you will be safe.“

Attis ducked his head and faced the door. In profile, there was a fineness to his bones, and such a light voice…

He faced forward at voices in the hall. Aquilina smoothed at her robe, folded her hands at her waist. “…harm can she do, Lucius?”

The two of them bowed as Caesar entered. “Just give me a moment, would you. Keep Graham busy with…Something.” He waved a hand at Attis. “Leave.”

He was gone before Caesar reached the center of the room. With a sigh, he kicked the chair away from the table and sat. “Well, priestess?”

“Imperator,” she said, bobbing her head. She ghosted up beside him, sure each step was too heavy, too loud. “How may I serve?”

“Aquilina, isn’t it?” And without waiting for an answer, “What would you tell a patient, Aquilina, who was waking up with headaches at night, and was losing vision of times?”

She stayed out of arm’s reach, took a breath. “I would…In some men, vulnerabilities of age…”

Her mouth twisted under the veil. He was grinning, seeming to enjoy her distress. “Do you have anything specific to say, or are you going to waste my time?”

She schooled her face, a drop of ice sinking through her chest. “Yes, Imperator. Tell me more?” she said, riffling through the pages in her head of medical texts, of headaches, of the functions of the eyes…

“Waking up in the nights with pain, that fades when I’ve started moving around,” he said, as her head dropped, thinking. “Tunnel vision, after bending, or standing sharply.” She breathed, thinking. “Anything, priestess? Or are they just assigning pretty faces to his job?”

“Apologies, Imperator,” she said. “Without…a way to more closely examine the inner workings of our body, my information is limited,” she said. Books talking about blood pressure, eye pressure, salts and balances of humors. “Perhaps a passing illness. Perhaps more water, to correct a deficit.”

“I could have found that out on my own.” Impatient, annoyed, with a glance at the door. People were speaking outside.

“There is the risk of conditions of the brain,” she said, hands clasped behind her back. “I believe…Pressure, within the skull, can cause such things. Trephination has been of help for such—”

“You’re not putting holes in my skull.”

She bowed at his tone. “No, Imperator. As you decree.” What then, what, what would get her out of here alive—Stall. “I have some instruments in the Temple infirmary. If you may allow me to fetch—”

The door opened, and she turned her back from it, heart pounding in her throat at the sight of the Legate. The head of the Praetorians followed, with a sour expression. “Caesar, I warned you against meeting with this…”

Caesar stayed seated, elbow on the arm of his chair, chin in hand. “And I told you to give me a moment’s peace, Graham.”

Aquilina froze, invisible, or praying she was.

Graham hesitated, aware of the open door, the Praetorians—and her. “I do not trust this woman with the life of one such as yourself.”

Caesar snorted. “Don’t you?” He turned to her, still resting his head on his hand. “Are you trustworthy, Aquilina?”

“I strive to be, Imperator,” she said, crushing down the urge the babble, too many eyes on her. “My life for yours. My life for the Legion.”

“There, you see?” Caesar stood—but deliberately slow. “But if you insist on making this a fight, Graham…” He waved a hand at her. “Dismissed, priestess, but have your tools at hand.”

“By your grace, Imperator,” she said, saluting, bowing, skirting the men. Attis was just outside the door, past Caesar’s guards and fell in behind as she walked. She stepped around the corner of the hall, stopping to lean and breathe.

People are still moving, she can hear them, behind her, and—

“Priestess, please keep walking,” Attis whispered. A hand on her elbow. “You’re drawing attention.”

She pulled away as though the touch stung, made herself straighten. He stepped ahead, and she followed, eyes on his back, letting the world become nothing but the cape across his shoulders. He held a door for her, and the sun, the fresh air pulled a weight from her shoulders, the tightness from her chest.

He returned to the gate to the Temple grounds, saluted. “I will remain here, Priestess, until I’m needed.”

“Thank you, guardsman,” she said, feeling normalcy return. Her feet were pointed to the Temple, to Drusa.


	6. Chapter 6

“I’m not sure. If he calls for me again, I can check,” Aquilina said. She squeezed the bulb on the end of the device, pressed on the cuff and leaned close to listened for escaping air. “Hells. Has Carina found me a replacement for this yet?”

“She would have come to you first,” Drusa said. “That’s all you have? Something _possibly_ wrong with his brain?”

“An important thing to be damaged,” she said. She began gathering her other things laid out on the table, slipping them back into the doctor’s bag. Her hand lingered on a scalpel. “Easy, far too easy, for it to be…”

“No.”

Aquilina looked at her reflection in it. “No one will get as close to him as I can.”

“No one will die faster,” Drusa said, taking it from her, placing it in the bag.

The infirmary was ringing silent, not even any sound filtering up from the creches on the floor below. It was heady, the thought. He had been alone in the room. It would only take a second, and even if the guards heard, so much damage could be done in a moment…

“Cassia thought to do the same, and you know what happened to her,” Drusa said, voice low.

“Cassia?” Aquilina raised her head. “You said she was overheard comforting another woman.”

Drusa’s eyes widened the tiniest fraction, but so close, so hard to miss— “What did you do.”

Drusa folded her arms, leaning a hip on the table. “Cassia wished to act. Immediately. Rashly,” she said. “I tried to dissuade her. The timing was wrong—To kill him in Flagstaff, with his most loyal men within the walls, his army readying for the march? The Temple would be razed.”

Aquilina stepped back, distance, safety, measuring her stance and intent. “What did you _do?_ ”

“She had taken a knife from the kitchens. Planned to pose as a messenger from Septima, with no intent of leaving that room after.” She took a bracing breath. “I took it from her. I thought the men would treat her less harshly if she was found unarmed. But she was easy to bait, in earshot of the Legionarys’ tents…”

“You killed her.”

Drusa shuddered. “I hoped they might only hold her overnight, enough to frighten her, but then the Legate got word…”

The blow was open-hand, but hard enough to turn her head, leave her there stunned, not even raising a hand to the pain. Words broke in her throat, and Aquilina made to leave.

“You will need to kill Graham as well, if you plan to kill Caesar.”

The words didn’t slow her, even after they sank in. Drusa’s footsteps followed her, her words, “You might pass Caesar’s death off as age, but Graham? So soon after?” she said. “You’ve met him yourself. When he dies, the Legate won’t trust us to—”

“When Caesar dies, the Legion dies with it.” Aquilina spat. Drusa stayed well back as she spun, out of reach. “Let the Legion throw itself into the jaws of the Bear. Let them thin their ranks, and _we_ will deal with the rest.”

“And how will we know the NCR has any hope of winning?” She spread her hands. “We know almost _nothing_ of them.”

“Then we need to,” Aquilina said. “Lucia.”

She could see the question die on Drusa’s lips. “She’s rotting here,” Aquilina went on. “She does nothing but hide her face and her existence from the world. She’s struck from our records. Send her West.”

Drusa shook her head. “I won’t risk it. We have our own network…”

“Of slaves. Of wives. Of people trapped in Legion camps. We need more.” Aquilina folded her arms. “And you so willing to have her play assassin. Graham knows her name, knows she was wife to the poisoned centurion.”

“She moved too fast,” Drusa said, bitter. “She was frightened. Would you rather she had _waited?_ She’s not his first wife, I’ve heard through the others how he was. She may never have been able to return.”

Aquilina fought a scowl. “Then our only option is sending her away.”

Drusa nodded, the movement a grudging thing, slow. “We… _could_ send her west. Not as a slave, she may not get free. A freewoman. A trader, perhaps.”

“Do you trust Carina to find a contact with our traders? Or would she act _rashly_ with this knowledge?”

“You have no right,” Drusa said, but her eyes were down, her lips drawn too thin. “I was _protecting_ us.”

“You have no _right_ to decide for all of us, decide when you’ll use the men like dogs to _frighten_ us,” Aquilina said, moving towards the door. “I know we keep separate for safety, Drusa, but I have no more tolerance for secrets between us. We are few enough. We need to work _together_ in this, not blindly with you whispering between.”

“I can’t—” Drusa took her arm.

“You _won’t_ ,” she said, shaking her loose.

“I can’t risk the rest of you!” Drusa let go of her arm and pushed past her, looking up and down the hall before closing the infirmary door. “I _won’t_ risk the rest of you. I can’t do this anymore.” Her voice caught, and she lowered her veil, hands shaking. “I saw them put her on that cross, Aquilina. I _watched_ , because Cassia deserved _one person_ there to witness her. Because I put her there. We’re not—we’re not warriors. We’re just women. Just slaves, still. We’re safest just following orders. Staying in line.”

Aquilina kept her hands at her sides, nearly trembling with the urge to strike her, shake her, scream _when did you mistake Caesar’s brood farm for safety._

“Then give me names,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could. “I know the women in the wash house can’t be the only ones. Give me names. We _are_ at war, Drusa, and because you refuse to fight it does not mean the rest of us will lay down to die.”

She pressed her hands to her face under veil. “They won’t trust you. Not so abruptly.”

“Then this hinges on you,” Aquilina said, putting her hands on her shoulders. “And I need you to think very deeply, before you leave us with nothing.”

Drusa shied at the touch, but clenched her fists and took a steadying breath. “And you think you can carry this? Carry the weight of people like Cassia? Women who didn’t need to die, but for you?”

“We have no choice,” Aquilina said, sober. “I have none.”

Drusa bowed her head, veil still hiding her face. “I’ll speak to the others. We can begin meeting again on the next wash day, discuss it further.”

***

Caesar never sent for her, and the entire Temple seemed to breathe easier as the gathered Legionaries marched west.

Their corner of the wash house needed to be cleared out, their barrel moved away, the benches used to stack boxes of soap. Drusa and Aquilina set it to rights, the others filing in one by one. Faces new to Aquilina joined them, women picked for discretion—and dissension. She counted them, a dozen in total, priestesses, teachers like herself, head of their Guard, a pair of clerks under Drusa. Powerful roles.

Something like hope dared stir in her chest.

“We can’t have another incident as with Cassia,” Drusa said—eliding over what had gotten her detained in the first place. “But we need to work together. Share our information. Lucia,” she gestured to her, hunched between her and Aquilina, “has agreed to go west and be our eyes and ears on the front, in the NCR. Carina, I need you to find a trader willing to take her on. I don’t care what story you tell them, so long as its believable.”

Carina tipped her head, curious, but said, “I have a group scheduled to go that way next week, that’re sometimes looking for workers. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good. Columba, what about your Guards? Is there any way they could accompany her, or go west with the men?”

She shook her head. “It’d draw attention, having them leave. And it would be too dangerous for most of them, getting found out. I won’t risk them.”

“Damn. Alright,” Drusa said. “You—”

“Felina,” one of the new women said.

“Felina, you work under Honoria. Tell us of her.”

“Well, to put it delicately,” she said, steepling her hands, “She’s a stone cold bitch.” The rest of them laughed. “Most of you know her by now, I think. She’s rabid, won’t put a toe out of line with Caesar’s teachings. But Septima approves of her, and she’s getting old.”

Aquilina and Drusa shared a look. “Succession,” Aquilina said.

“You’re the next best choice, Drusa,” Regula, of the gardens, said. “We can’t kill her, that’ll look suspicious. What can we do to discredit her? Make her look bad?”

“Get her reassigned,” Columba said. “The temples to the east and south are growing. If she’s a danger here, we can at least put her too far away to cause harm.”

“Septima can still recall her,” Drusa said, chewing her lip. “I’ll see what I can do. I might have to argue it with her, and pushing too hard could make the high priestess suspicious.”

“No slip of the pen here?” Maura said.

“None,” Drusa said. “She speaks directly to the consul on the matter. It’s above me, choosing who establishes a Temple.”

They spoke until the shadows shifted, the clean robes left hanging out of range of their cigarettes gone bone dry. The women left one at a time, or in pairs, not drawing suspicion, mingling with the women and girls finishing the last of the laundry. 

Every third week, comparing intelligence that came through the healers, the traders, priestesses sent afield to larger Legion-held towns. The war in the Mojave was scaling up, growing brutal, bloody, more sides drawn in. Fewer children were brought to the Temple, the Legion withdrawing from the tribals on its borders to strengthen the Mojave fortifications. They discussed the possibilities, when Caesar finally made his play—if the Legion lost, if they won, if some other, stranger outcome came to be. Bitterly, they bowed their heads to the fact that there was no action to take until the war was won, or they gained enough information to predict it.

A sober day, with Lucia absent, none but Carina with an excuse to see her leave with the traders. They drank to her health, her safety, with liquor Columba had confiscated from a Guard. Aquilina kept her face still, an empty spot on the bench beside her.

And when the word came, it came fast, rattling its way through Legion camps and towns, whispers in its wake.

The Legion had lost the Dam. Graham was executed for his failure, his name a death sentence to any who dared speak it.

And Caesar was _furious _.__

___Decimatio_ was the whispered word, and even the Temple Guard steeled themselves for the order. The consul ordered Caesar’s complex readied for him, his surviving generals. Every one of the women walked as if on broken glass, waiting for orders, waiting for punishment, _anything_._ _

__There were words of furious reorganization in the surviving Legion to the west, but nothing, nothing came to the Temple._ _

__Aquilina knocked on the door to Drusa’s office. She jumped, clutching at the pencil held listlessly in her fingers. “Caesar’s name, Aquilina…”_ _

__“I’m sorry, but I need a record from you…” She looked up and down the hall, shut the door behind her. She put her hands on the table, leaned close over her papers. “ _What are we going to do?_ ”_ _

__“Nothing, until we get orders,” she said, stacking some of her papers more neatly. “We don’t know yet—”_ _

__“If we don’t know the future, then we need to be the ones to make it,” she said, pulling out a chair. “We discussed candidates for Legate, if Graham died in the Mojave. Were any of them killed? Commended? Is Caesar showing any one of them favor?”_ _

__“I—We don’t know. Everything we’re getting is conflicting or not coming through at all,” she said, pulling a folio from a stack, identical to the others. She paged through it. “We had eyes on several men…Tullius, he was recently put in charge of Santa Fe region, but his cohort was one of the hardest hit… No word on Titus Decius, or Gaius Niger, though I don’t think he was recalled from the Colorado border…”_ _

__“Then who do we have information on?” Aquilina said, reading upside-down. “Gaius Rufius?”_ _

__“Most likely dead,” she said, turning a page. “Marcus Aelius, of White Sands. His cohort lost a number of their veterans, but he survived, and he has apparently been allowed to return to his duties unpunished. He was asked to move double-time to reach the Dam before the battle, and exceeded Caesar’s expectation, as well.”_ _

__“Aelius,” Aquilina said. “Wives? I seem to recall a Sabina…”_ _

__“Not one of our circle, and he may have taken another from slave stock, or a town girl… But there’s a chance Caesar might favor him with a Temple-trained wife.”_ _

__Aquilina tapped her fingers on the table. “And he’s a moderate? If we can put a Legate in power who isn’t blind to Caesar’s lies…”_ _

__There was a scratch on the door, and Drusa was on her feet. “Come in.”_ _

__Pia pushed the door aside, letting it swing so she could twist her fingers around themselves, thumbs tapping. “I, um. Priestesses, I. Um…”_ _

__“Hands,” Aquilina said, gently._ _

__Pia tucked them behind her back, face going red as she took a breath. “I am sorry to interrupt, Priestesses. One of the boys broke his wrist, and his teacher asked me to find you…”_ _

__She and Drusa shared a look. “I’ll be right down. Go let them know.” She scurried off, and Aquilina rubbed at her face. “Let me know if we get more information?”_ _

__“Of course,” Drusa said, putting the folio away._ _

__“And I…” Aquilina stood, turned away. “Never mind.”_ _

__“You may as well ask while you’re here,” Drusa said._ _

__“I did want to ask after a record,” she said, studying the warp of the door. “If…Once the boys leave the Temple. If Pluvius…”_ _

__“Don’t go looking.” She turned to Drusa, seated again, pen in hand. “Do you recall, Aquilina, that I was a wife before I was a priestess?”_ _

__A wife, like a dozen other she had tended, to birth a child and pass it on to a slave, to return to a husband who… “I do.”_ _

__“Even if I did have Pluvius’ records, I would not tell you,” she said, reading a sheet as she pulled it towards her. “Spare yourself that pain.” She looked up at her silence, her face serene, neutral, a mask. “In this case, I can only ask you trust my judgment.”_ _

____

Aquilina met her gaze. She dropped her eyes and nodded, headed for the infirmary.

***

She went herself to the gardens, walking the rows of medicinal plants with basket and knife. Regula walked with her, raking through the soil now and then, running leaves through her fingers with a critical eye. “I don’t want anyone else implicated in this,” Aquilina murmured, clipping a broc flower from the stem.

“And we lose you if you’re caught,” Regula said, taking a tie from her belt, straightening a soapberry sapling against its stake. 

Aquilina almost stopped her, corrected the knot. “I won’t have a slave who’s done nothing to earn this be put in my place.”

Regula brushed dirt off her hands, joining her among the broc thicket. “Does Drusa know?”

“No need,” she said, trimming another bloom with the stroke of the knife. “She may even intervene.”

A look of doubt, that she met with a level eye. Regula nodded and stepped aside, gesturing for one of her workers and calling for more fertilizer on the row of trees.

Aquilina worked into the evening, basket full of cuttings. The garden slaves were called in at sundown, and Regula made one last pass for forgotten tools and sloppy work. “Coming in?”

“Not yet,” Aquilina said, bundling a handful of jointfir. “Is the queen-of-night blooming? I thought I smelled it last night.”

“It is,” she said with a sigh. “Beata swore it was useful, but if you’re not interested in it, I’d like to shred it for compost. It needs too much babying in this climate.”

“I’ll take one more try, harvesting a few open flowers,” Aquilina said. “I may be out a little late.”

“Oh.” Regula smoothed away her concern, waving towards her wing of the Temple. “Well, I’ll have a light readied for you by the benches. Just don’t get caught by a Guard, the night shift is grumpy.”

“And how would you know?” Aquilina said, archly. Regula grinned and put her finger to her lips, headed back towards the building.

She took her time evaluating the xander plot, finally taking a handful of smaller rhizomes, leaving the largest to send out new runners. The sun was well down, and she circled towards the workbenches, stacked with tools and buckets and empty containers. Regula had been as good as her word, a battered metal lantern left on the endmost, a spring-striker next to it. Keeping the wick as low as possible, she made a straight line towards the rubble piles, out past the maize, a spade in hand.

She came back with her basket heavier, the herbs rearranged, a few sprigs of obnoxiously sweet blooms on top. She stowed her tools in the bench, slowly, precisely, before turning for the door.

***

The Legion withdrew from the Mojave, returning to the East, sinking teeth into its borders and the new blood within them. The flow of slaves and tribal children began again, and Aquilina’s days became parasites, vitamin deficits, old untreated wounds, and the nervous tribals suffering them turned into practice dummies for her students.

The tone in the wash house changed, each time they met, frustration over the Mojave shifting to hope as more temples were established. As she stripped, dropping her clothes into the wash tub, one of the new priestesses, Prisca, was already laughing with the others.

“…So Macra had the slaves send her a gecko, and told the men she read misfortune in its entrails. They even talked their decanus into avoiding the river, and the runaways managed to slip off.” Prisca passed the cigarette to the next in line. “All she _really_ did with the gecko was eat like a queen for a week.”

The rest of them laughed, trying to keep it quiet. They scooted aside for Aquilina to sit, asking after news, if she had heard from any of her healers. “Nothing interesting, not from afield. Just a lot of complaining about the men, and the odd botched mending to deal with a troublesome Legionary,” she said, taking the offered cigarette. “I do have a new trainee I’m hopeful of though. I’ll feel her out a little more before I invite her along.”

They nodded to each other. They were too many to meet all at once now, smaller groups meeting in the gardens, the bighorner paddocks, elsewhere, all of them overlapping at least one to share their intelligence. “The consul still cleaning out your supply of valerian?” Columba asked.

“He must reek of it by now. I can’t imagine being under so much stress you can’t sleep, the poor man,” she said, deadpan. A few of them tittered. Aquilina passed the cigarette along. “Has anyone heard? What’s the tone of the men, on our legate candidate?”

“We’ve had our priestesses and wives trying to put the idea in the men’s heads, but there’s not much traction yet,” Maura said. “It’s slow work, trying not to look suspicious about—”

The sound of sandals slapping the ground made her stop, and the rest of them tensed, looking at the barrel full of clothes. But it was Drusa who threw back her veil, panting. “He’s made his choice,” she said, leaning against the wall. “It’s not White Sands.”

“Who?” Aquilina said, standing.

Drusa shook her head, a hand to her chest. “He’s not even a Legionary. Some, some tribal champion, a Hidebark. The ones who caused so much trouble in the southeast.”

“And he just…” One of the priestesses raised her hands, empty, helpless.

“That’s most all I have now,” Drusa said, straightening. “How many of you have contacts in that area?”

“I have one healer,” Aquilina said.

“A priestess, who should be coming back with a load of children soon,” Maura said.

“Good. Alright,” Drusa said, sitting on a stack of brick. “Let me think…”

The mood in the side room soured. Prisca stood, stubbing out the cigarette. “There’s some clean things stowed here…”

They dressed again silently, Drusa with her head in her hands. Stole pinned back in place, Aquilina touched her shoulder. “Do you have _anything_ else we can go on?”

“’Lanius’,” she said, sitting up, hands in her lap. “That’s what I’ve heard. Legate Lanius.”

The sound from the rest of the wash house, the girls and the water and the crackle of fires, was a world away. “That sounds…” Columba started, trailing off to stare down at her helmet.

“We’ll have no control on him,” Drusa said. “He won’t swallow the lie of Mars, Caesar. Won’t listen to us. I spoke to a girl who knew of the Hidebarks. Their women are already little more than slaves.”

“Lie?” Felina said, brow furrowed.

Drusa looked up, away. “You’re new. There’s layers to this,” she said, standing. “Maura, if you can get word to your priestess, have her gather _everything_ she can on the situation before she returns. Aquilina, I need your healer to find a few reliable people to keep information flowing back. Caesar’s men plan to stay in that region for a while, she might be our only contact.”

“I will. I was hoping for a report on—” Aquilina stopped short, turning the corner back to the main room.

Honoria tipped her head, arms folded. Her nostrils flared, their scars as fitting on a fighting dog. “Not much laundry to do over here, ladies.”

“Enough,” Aquilina said, waving at the barrel, shooing the other women back. Drusa stepped closer, blocking Honoria’s view. “If you’ll excuse us, priestess Honoria, I’ll have my girl finish with it.”

“Your girl told me some troubling things,” Honoria said. “I would rather discuss it with the two of you. Now.”

Aquilina leaned back, just enough to put the others in the corner of her eye. A spill of fallen timber and rubble led to a break high in the back wall, and Columba crouched next to it, helping a priestess swing out and down, dropping them safely on the other side.

“She hasn’t mentioned them to me,” Aquilina said, all concern. “Pia is an excellent helper, I’m surprised she—”

“I put the fear of the gods in her, and she still answers to me over you,” she said, narrowed her eyes at Drusa. “What concern is our next Legate to you?”

“Merely trying to keep abreast of the records,” Drusa said, voice brittle. She forced a laugh. “Some of us have bets…”

“And why would you want _control_ of him?” Honoria asked, jaw set.

“Priestesses, this part of the building isn’t stable.” Columba sounded like a stranger, voice pitched lower, more threatening. “Can’t keep a thought in your damn heads, we’ve told you to keep out of this end of things.”

“Our apologies, Decanus,” Aquilina said, bowing as she dropped her veil. As she rose, she saw Columba wink on the side away from Honoria. The room behind was empty. “We have so many girls now, we’re running out of space...”

They waved a hand. “Spare me your excuses and get out of here. I’m sure you have diapers to change or something.”

Drusa and Aquilina bowed, turning to leave. Honoria took her arm as she passed, and Columba tensed, glaring. “Cover yourself.” She let go to whip her veil down, murmuring an apology, and the two of them hurried away. “You are outside of the Temple building, woman, have you _forgotten_ your place? It is improper for anyone but Caesar to lay eyes on…”

“She’ll go to the consul,” Drusa whispered, hurrying back to the Temple. “I don’t know what to do. I—”

“She can’t go directly to the Consul without going through the High Priestess, can she?”

“I—Maybe. I don’t think so. She would have to go to him herself, it would draw more attention than I think she would want.”

"Is she still meeting with her?" Aquilina asked. "It was every seventh day, wasn't it, after dinner."

"Yes. Wait, how do you—"

“What happens at these meetings?”

“Well, they’ve mostly been discussing her duties, discussed assigning new clerks and heads of disciplines,” Drusa said, holding open a side door into the main Temple building. “Why?”

“Has the consul attended any?” Aquilina said, pausing in the hall, away from listening ears.

“No, but Septima was planning to get him involved in a few weeks.” Drusa leaned close, whispering. “What in all hells are you—”

“Have him meet with them as soon as possible. Tell Septima she planned it to be sooner, but forgot. She’s old,” she said at Drusa’s frown. “I’m sure he’ll want to go over her materials, especially as our former head teacher. Her books.”

“Her…”

“The consul’s getting medicines from me. I can give him a fever for a day or two, keep him from taking messengers,” she said. “I can do the same for Septima if you think we need, but she might suspect it was me.”

Drusa’s mouth opened, closed. “You know what they’ll…”

“I do.”

Her mouth twisted. “You were furious with _me_ for making this decision without you.”

“You killed one of ours to keep us in line,” Aquilina said, a low hiss. “I’ll kill the woman who would see _all of us_ crucified, and you off Septima’s throne.”


	7. Chapter 7

”Pia, a moment.”

The girl flinched, hand on the door to leave. Aquilina’s students turned to look at her, making her shrink as she turned to bow. Aquilina looked up from her patient to say, “I’d like you to take an inventory of our finished medicines tonight, before you go to supper. Please get started now.”

“Yes m’m,” she said, sloping off, knocking into a barrier beside one of the beds as she scurried away.

“Thank you for your patience, Decia,” Aquilina said. Her patient gave her a faint smile. “So we have a pregnant woman with a suddenly swollen, tender leg below the knee, but without a fever. Who can tell me what that points to?”

“A blood clot,” Mina said, sorting through a stack of notes.

“Correct. Celia, besides the obvious, why is that dangerous?”

“Um.” She juggled a badly-bound notebook. “It can break off and travel…”

Aquilina wrapped up the lesson with a few of them preparing a willow tea, two others helping Decia to walk the length of the hall and back. She went to the rear of the infirmary, her bedroom and storeroom, closing the door behind her. Back turned as she examined a shelf, Pia jumped, smearing the chalk on her slate. “Sorry, m’m, I—”

“Sit down, please,” she said, patting the cot. Pia, still clutching the slate, perched so close to the edge she looked ready to fall. “I didn’t want you to get involved with this.”

She shrank on herself as Aquilina went to her desk, pulled down jars of dried herbs from the cupboard above. “I…”

“I don’t blame you,” she said, measuring out valerian into a few squares of cloth. “I understand Honoria was your teacher since you were very young. I see why you would talk to her about things you might have overheard.”

“I don’t—I’m sorry…” Pia stammered, tears in her voice.

“Hush,” Aquilina said, turning to her. She knelt next to her, using a spare cloth to wipe her face. “Things will be changing soon. I need you to promise, whatever happens, you won’t tell her any more.”

She hid her face in her hands, shook her head. “I can’t…”

“Are you scared of her?”

A long, long silence, and at last, a nod. Aquilina smoothed at her hair. “I’m sorry, my dear girl. I am sorry.” She gathered her up, held her a moment as she composed herself. She let go as Pia pulled away, let her dry her face. “I won’t let her near you again. I promise. Here.” She reached into the belt of her robes, pulled out a key. “Now, I need a promise from you. This key goes to this door. If you ever need to hide, you come in here, and no one can follow. _But_ ,” as she reached for it, “I need a promise you won’t go to Honoria again. Ever. Come to me if she approaches you, or come here and lock the door. And you will never need to tell her anything you hear Drusa or I say, or anyone else.”

Her hand froze in the air, fingers curling back. “You’re going against the Legion’s will.” Pia ducked her head. “Honoria said. It’s…wrong.”

“Do you think Honoria is right? Someone who’s frightened you so?” Pia didn’t meet her eyes, but the doubt was there. “We’re trying to protect people. Including you. I know it’s all…very strange. That’s why I’m giving you this key, to keep you safe. I’m trusting you with it. Can you trust me back?”

Pia stared at the key. She swallowed hard and nodded, closing her hand around it. “Good girl. That’s brave of you, standing up to her.” Aquilina kissed her forehead as she rose, going back to the desk. She pulled down a half-dried bundle of white flowers. “I’ll have you take this to the consul’s building.”

Pia watched her grind up the queen-of-night blossoms, adding it to the valerian. “That’s not his usual…”

“I know,” she said, trying the bundles closed.

“Queen-of-night’s poisonous.”

“In large amounts. As are many herbs,” Aquilina said, serene, dropping them into a basket. “It can be very useful in small doses, however.”

The girl gave it a doubtful look, but took it and stood. Aquilina held the door open for her. “I think Leonia has some honey in stock. Tell her I said you earned a treat, after supper.”

Her face brightened marginally, and she trotted off. 

***

Aquilina stood in one of the upper galleries, watching the hall below. The floor was taken up by women in slave outfits, each with an older girl, and at least one younger child hanging off them. Most of the infants were quiet at this point in the evening, some left in their rooms to sleep, the ones in the hall allowed to doze in the laps of their caretakers, but once or twice a slave was forced to leave early with an armful of angry toddler.

Honoria stood at the head of the hall, pointing along at the old green boards with a stick. _Sacrifice_ seemed to be the theme of the night, emphasizing how one life in the Legion was expendable, in the face of larger progress, how failure and death went hand in hand.

“There is no exception.” She rapped the board at no word in particular, but the sound made some in the front row start. “Even our former Legate was not above Caesar’s judgment. Forget his name, those who knew it. He is the Burned Man to us, and a reminder to all who would not sacrifice ourselves to the Legion’s cause, rather than give our lives pursuing it.

“Legate Lanius, Caesar’s newest champion, has taken his place. He has proven himself devoted to our cause, but even he shall be subject to our laws. If the most ferocious, the most valuable of our fighting men is expected to die in service, then we, mere women, have no excuse to slack…”

Aquilina left the railing, taking the stairs to the ground floor. Honoria’s voice carried well—first appointed a teacher, maybe, since she could be heard from the back row—and she caught words as she went. She traded a nod with another priestess as she passed her, face carefully neutral. _Honesty, Industry, Prudence,_ she heard, chanted back by the slaves, and she couldn’t help but grit her teeth.

She reached the entrance to the main hall as she wrapped up, a pair of younger women helping her roll the boards aside. The squeak of their wheels was drowned out by the sound of the assembly rousing their charges to leave, hid Aquilina’s footsteps as she took the end of one.

Honoria didn’t look up until the board was slotted in with the rest, her surprise shading immediately to anger. “How dare you come _near_ me,” she hissed, her back to the others. “Treason’s a long death.”

“I wished to speak with you alone,” Aquilina said, keeping her voice level, face composed. “We needn’t go far.”

“I have no words for you, traitor,” Honoria said, trying to brush past. “Septima won’t meet with me, but I’m sure the consul—”

“Is feeling poorly as well.” Aquilina didn’t flinch as she turned, frowning. “A mild fever, some sweats. Perhaps an upset stomach. No condition to meet with anyone, surely.” The younger women paused, waiting on orders, not close enough to hear. She waved a hand at them. “Go on, you two, no need to stay up.”

“You’ll both stay.” The hall was mostly empty, a few slaves still filing out at the edges. Honoria didn’t bother lowering her voice. “I want witnesses for this. I don’t know what you’re up to, priestess, but you have admitted to poisoning your superiors!”

“It’s not so dramatic as that,” Aquilina said. “I wish to give you a chance, Honoria. Your only one. Ladies, please leave.”

“They are obedient to _me_ , and I have ordered them to stay.”

“So do you hit them like your younger girls?” Aquilina leaned to look around her. “Does she, Felina?”

“Spare the rod, Aquilina, and imagine what a shock slavery will be. What I do is still kinder than what our men will,” Honoria said, stepping between them. “This is irrelevant. I should drag you and that snake Drusa to the consul, ill or not.”

“Oh, try,” Aquilina said. “Call one of the Guard. Drag me there fighting. See the consul behead you for disturbing his sleep. After all,” she said, all false sweetness, “you already know about how _kind_ our men are.”

Honoria glared at her, mouth set. “You won’t see the next sunset.”

“I hope you do not,” Aquilina said. “For your own sake.”

***

The consul was irritable enough, after a poor night’s sleep. The sudden _had you forgotten, a meeting with Septima, tut tut, she’ll be so irritated_ messenger at his door had certainly not helped. The priestesses gave him a wide berth as he stormed up to her office.

Aquilina joined the ones lingering near her door—always a few, so close to their own rooms, and so close to such a ready font of gossip. Her veil was cast back, as though an uncovered face would sharpen her hearing.

The voices inside were hushed, but none of them dared put an ear to the door to listen. After a long silence, the consul could be heard, voice low with threat, with horror, “ _Explain this._ ”

“It’s not mine. It’s not—I don’t know where—”

“What _histories_ is your Temple teaching, Septima?”

The High Priestess’ voice was too reedy to carry, but Honoria began to sob. “No, I didn’t know her. Cassia was—I swear I didn’t—Drusa! This was you, your doing, I’ve been framed—”

“Two in less than a year, Priestess, _two_. How deep does this rot go? I’m tempted to call in our interrogators from the field, put them to all of you women.”

“You will not _dare_.” The priestesses in the halls leaned away, the fury in Septima’s voice like a flame. 

“If that’s what is necessary to cleanse this place—”

“Consul Servius Manilus Canus! I am yet High Priestess of Mars and will call _His_ wrath upon you for drawing steel in my home!”

 _The Guard_ some of the women murmured, and a pair of them rushed away. Aquilina pushed past the others, towards the door. This was going wrong.

“What do I fear from you, old woman? _You._ Come quietly. Your life is forfeit, but may be less painful if you comply with our inquisitors.”

“NO!”

She threw the door open. Drusa huddled beside Septima’s chair, veiled, hands to her face. Honoria was backed into the corner, the consul with gladius drawn, advancing. She looked over his shoulder, face covered, but her stance shifting from panic to outrage. “You! This is _your_ fault!”

Still seated, Septima turned to her. “What does she m—”

“How _dare_ you!”

Honoria managed barely two strides. The consul’s blade leapt, soldier’s training overriding logic. He dropped the gladius in shock as she fell, lodged in her chest. “I didn’t—she—”

Aquilina was at her side, not touching the wound, knowing it was futile to try and tend it. She pulled back her veil, watched Honoria’s mouth work silently in pain, eyes struggling to focus. When they did, she snarled, reaching out to push her away. Aquilina grabbed hold of her wrist, already clammy, cold. She put a hand to her chest as she pulled the blade free, Honoria taking one last wet gasp before her head fell back, life gurgling from her.

“You killed…”

“Leaving it in only prolonged her suffering.” She held the gladius up to him, handle-first. “Well struck, Consul. A shame you were taken from the field.”

He took it, looking her in the eye. He caught himself, looked away as he found a cloth to clean the blade. “Cover yourself.”

Aquilina dropped her veil, drew Honoria’s down as well. She left a bloodstain on it, and examined what was left on her hand.

“I have no further business here.” The consul missed the doorknob on his first try, and left it half-open behind him. Through it, one of the priestesses put her hands to her face, crying out.

“Close that,” Septima said. Drusa stepped forward, hesitant, unable to take her eyes off Honoria’s corpse. The high priestess picked up a book on her desk, the cover replaced with poor-quality leather. “What do you know of this, Aquilina?”

“Honoria’s books, priestess,” she said, still kneeling. “We should call the Guard, to help—”

“She accused both of you.” Septima tossed the book on her desk, the noise making Drusa start. “And so close to eavesdrop. Such a coincidence.”

“Desperation,” Aquilina said, standing. “High Priestess, we should move—”

“No.” Septima’s eyes were beady, sharp, nearly hidden under the set of her brow. “I told you to burn these, Drusa. How did they wind up in another’s hands?”

Drusa sank into the chair opposite her. Aquilina stood firm. “If you know what is in them, then you know that Caesar—”

“I know Caesar offered us obedience or death!” Septima stopped to cough, long enough that it ended in a wheeze, reaching for a cup of water. “Tell me,” she said, rasping, “why the Guard should not have you on a cross.”

“I never thought It would come to this,” Drusa whispered, wiping her face. “Killing our own…”

“You’ve lost, old mother,” Aquilina said. Septima’s face was unchanged, listening. Drusa looked up, fear in her. “There are enough of us who made this happen, priestesses, teachers, the Guard…You are outnumbered in your own Temple. The women here, the generation they train, are no longer yours.”

The high priestess was still but for the rise and fall of her chest, a quiver of anger or a tremor of age in her hands.

“We do not ask for your death, as we did Honoria,” Aquilina said. “Nor your abdication, High Priestess. We respect the work you have done, to establish this place. We would ask you to continue, for as long as you are able, even if this place is no longer your own.”

“If I refuse?” Septima said.

“You are old, High Priestess,” Aquilina said, level. “As your head of healers, I believe your mind has fallen to paranoia, delusions, illusions of the past. Drusa will meet with the Consul in your stead.”

Drusa sat up straighter, tried to slow her breathing. “I may not be alive but for you, Septima,” she said, the smallest tremor in her voice. “And I began this, in your shadow. If you would punish any of us, it should be me, for a personal betrayal.”

“Lest you need to raise a new flock entirely, culling every priestess under your roof as suspect,” Aquilina said.

Septima looked to her. Her mouth opened, unsmiling, and a creak of a laugh escaped. “Too old and tired to weed my own garden, am I?” She sat back in her chair. “I suppose I deserved this, letting you take so much responsibility, Drusa.” Her eyes flicked to Aquilina, and added sharply, “ _Learn_ from it.”

“Yes, High Priestess,” she said, standing to bow. Aquilina inclined her head, Septima watching them both levelly.

“Now, call the Guard, and have Honoria buried. I will officiate her funeral this evening,” Septima said, looking down at her body. “An unkind woman, yes. But kindness has never furthered the Legion.” 

***

The funeral was held in the greens by the Wall, grown high and unyielding since Aquilina first passed beneath them. The guards that paced the walkway above looked down at the priestesses gathered below, Septima at their head.

Watching the crowd, Aquilina noted, hardly a tear was shed. 

They went about their days in mourning, red shawls replaced with black until the new moon rose. The consul postponed his meeting with Septima until then, his wife asking on his behalf for some brew to calm shaken nerves.

The year passed. Even so far from the Legion’s borders, the Temple was flooded with children, slaves, women, Lanius’ conquest of Colorado and the Utah carving a bloody swathe across the land.

In the wash house, the other odd corners, the priestesses grew more brazen, more open in their words. To the slaves, the children, there was only speech of Mars and Caesar, but between themselves some took to blaming _dear Mr. Sallow_ as they muttered about their work.

Aquilina met Drusa alone in her room, showing her a letter, addressed to _Dear Auntie_ , so much pointless drivel. Aquilina had frowned at it until Drusa pointed to the odd punctuation, extra spits of ink in the letters—and each line resolved into something like a knotted cord, each interval a letter, a phrase.

Children, slaves, illnesses, letters—a long blur of temple life. Pia grew steadier, more confident, and Aquilina took no offense at sleeping in an infirmary cot when the girl locked the back room at night, having spent the day with some fear in her head. She put in a recommendation for her to remain in the Temple, a priestess, rather than throw her to the wolves as a wife.

News of Lanius, through the Guard, who heard through the fighting men; _Monster of the East_ , they whispered. The priestesses in the field, tending the stolen tribal children in his wake, shuddered to speak of him. Orders came down from Caesar, wives as rewards to his officers, and Aquilina watched Drusa put her head in her hands at the request for _two for the Legate, of finest comportment, wholesome of face, strong of body, and in the age of greatest fertility._

News of the Mojave, the Dam, that sorry scab that Caesar could not resist picking. They lost touch with Lucia for a month, their supply lines shifted, until she found a runner willing to make the route from the front to the Temple and not ask questions. The network of priestesses stopped well short of the Colorado, but the scattering of wives in the frontline camps kept messages coming back: New Vegas had a Dictator of its own, Robert House, with an army of machines.

And in it all, as they received reports of a courier who had caught Caesar’s eye, Septima collapsed.

A younger priestess nearly tripped as she rushed into the gardens, ran to Aquilina sitting at the desk by the wall. Half out of her chair, she caught her as she stumbled. “Drusa says—the High Priestess—”

She ordered her to the infirmary, for Pia and her bag of tools, and herself to Septima’s quarters. Aquilina heard the coughing from in the hall, opened the door to the office to find Septima on the ground, a pillow behind her head, Drusa helping her sit up enough to hold a handkerchief to her mouth. It came away with a smear of rust, of blood.

They helped her to the bed, behind a screen. Pia scratched at the door, handed off her bag of instruments. Septima was too weak to protest as she checked blood pressure, the color of her nail beds, pausing at the round, bulbous shape of the nails themselves. She set a stethoscope to her chest as Drusa hovered, heard the labor of her lungs, gently tapped to listen for echoes.

“How long has she been coughing blood?” she asked Drusa, leaving Septima to rest.

“Two weeks,” she said, head hung. “She didn’t want me to tell you,” she said, to the question on her face. “Doesn’t trust you.”

Aquilina nodded. “I believe there is a mass in her chest. It’s probably been growing for years." More gently, "There’s nothing I can do.”

Held her, as she wept.

There was a hearth in the office, relic of an age more occupied with ostentation than the desert heat. She slept beside it, trading vigil with Drusa, keeping Septima plied with teas to clear her throat and keep her calm, compresses to keep her warm. Her breathing worsened, but Drusa refused her to stop trying, anything, anything.

They shared letters from Lucia, in the Mojave now, watching events unfold. The Courier Caesar favored had sunk her teeth in the Legion; an old tribal, Lucia mused, with old blood to repay. Vulpes Inculta had indeed paid dearly in it, she said, his men massacred and himself staked up in a town he had purged. Aquilina crumpled the paper in her hand, bile and envy rising in her.

Septima declined further, a wet, crackling rub in her chest as she breathed. Pneumonia, the old man’s friend, that gentle death since the old world’s old world. Aquilina tried to hold patience with Drusa’s upset; tried to reconcile the cold High Priestess with the Septima that had saved her from the life of a brood mare.

The consul was still wary of the Temple, had stared at the stain on the carpet for the duration of his last meeting. When he sent a messenger, asking to consult on the state of the Temple, Drusa had him sent to her own quarters.

“Keep her quiet,” she murmured to Aquilina. “I’ll tell her what’s happening after.”

“Of course,” Aquilina said. She sat at Septima’s bedside, her stack of Latin books beside her, read through several times. Looking for distraction, she spotted a tear near the hem of her robe, and she picked at it with needle and thread, weaving a patch to bridge the gap.

She marveled at it. How simple it was. How strange, with no ulterior motive, this plain, flat mending. She lost herself in it, until Septima’s hand patted at the blanket, gesturing. “What is it, priestess?” she asked, leaning close.

Her eyes opened at her voice, narrow. “Where is…”

“The consul asked to meet with the high priestess, and she left in your stead,” she said. “Go back to sleep, old mother. You are still very sick.”

She stared at her, eyes beady and sunken. “I wish Honoria to succeed me.”

Aquilina hesitated, took another stitch. “We know.”

Septima blinked, set to coughing again. “Where…Honoria is…?”

She wrapped her thread tidily, put the needle through her skirt before she let her robe fall. “Gone away, madam, to the Temple in Phoenix. Has the compress gone cold?”

Septima continued to cough, thin and feeble and her body too weak to stop them. Aquilina held water to her lips when it slowed. She seemed to come more awake with the effort of it, let Aquilina sit her up. “Dead,” she wheezed. “Lying…so easy to you, now…”

“When we need,” she said, swinging a kettle closer to the fireplace.

“Lying to…this Legate, Caesar…See you dead for it. Not such graceful losers, our men,” Septima said, reaching for a fresh handkerchief. “What do you gain, for this?”

“Power. As mankind has always done,” Aquilina said. “And with it, no more slaves. No more Legion.”

Septima watched her as she measured out medicines, grinding them into a paste. She seemed to gather her strength to say, “Then I fear for their future, girl. What Caesar has built, what I have built…Our only hope for them.”

“You’re too sick for an argument, old mother,” Aquilina folded the paste into a cloth, pouring the hot water over it. “Save your strength.”

“For…what?” She was quiet as she pulled back the blanket, removing the chilled compress and replacing it with the fresh. “More blind than I am, girl.” She wheezed on every breath, eyes nearly closed. “Caesar…Edward Sallow…stood before us with six tribes. Not Legion yet. He…ordered all of us killed, who wouldn’t join him. Women, children. _Total war_ , he taught us.” Aquilina held her hand as she coughed, rubbed warmth into the paper-thin skin. “And I asked him…If he continues, and his men die, from where will he find more?”

Aquilina waited, supporting the water cup when she gestured. “I wouldn’t see our young ones murdered,” she said, so quiet she had to lean close to hear. “This Temple…Began as an act of love, to them.”

“No more a stay of execution, old mother,” she said.

Septima laughed, a creak of bones and cracking wood. “Blind. You were…tribal? Has my Temple made you forget the wastes?” She gripped her hand back, with all the strength in her. “Every dawn is hard-won. No. The Legion…Brutal. You see it. Know. Know Caesar is the safest we have been, trampling the petty warlords, bringing _order._ ”

“At the cost of blood. Of tribes, of peoples, of the safety of those under his men,” Aquilina said. “What happens when there are no more to conquer?”

The high priestess’s eyes were closed, but as she reached to check her pulse, she said, “We change.” Another fit of coughing, weaker yet. “Our men…know nothing of home. Of holding safe. Of hearths. We break them of love so they can war. I…”

Aquilina stroked her hair, waited for the fit to subside. “When…when they stand on their last borders, lost… we would rise up. Safe in what they made. Long bloody road…for the next children to grow safe.” She reached out, gathering a handful of her stole. “Drusa…too much heart. Not enough vision. Failed to see her realities, and Cassia broke her nerve.” She had to stop, breathe, but there was fire in her yet. “You are…Aquilina. The eagle. Fierce and bloody.” She tapped her fist against her chest. “Drusa bested a tired old woman. _Prove_ you deserve this Temple. She may sit my throne…but you will be the one to hold it.” She let go, and Aquilina tucked her hand against her side. Septima’s chest still labored, and she lay back, eyes closed. “No victory without blood.”

She thought of Pluvius, born unwanted, his mother killed by it, marched off to die himself. Of Lucia, honed hard and bitter by the Temple, a child with the hands of an assassin. “Do you truly think the men we have raised would allow us?”

The high priestess gazed at her, eyes faintly moving under heavy lids, and said nothing.

“Old mother, I trust that everything you have said is the truth. But those seven tribes, that battlefield was yours. The Temple is ours. And we both know the Legion is not the way to a future.”

Septima nodded, barely moving. “Then you are midwife to…whatever Legion rises, in Caesar’s ashes.”

Aquilina bowed her head. She listened to the priestess’s breathing, each draw of air a battle, even in pain her body refusing to die. “You have made me a healer, in your Legion. But in truth, I only know of their ways because I was a storyteller, a teacher. A keeper of histories. One who would recall to past to keep us from harm in the future.” Septima watched her from sunken eyes. “One who heard the last words of the dead, and what last story they saw fit to tell. I will hold yours dear, old mother.”

Septima’s lips moved as though to speak, but only nodded as another, weaker cough took her. Aquilina stroked her hand. “I have herbs that can help you sleep, if you wish.”

A nod, barely a tip of her chin, her eyes closed. Aquilina kissed her forehead and went to the kettle.

She finished mending the tear in her robe as the door opened, Drusa breezing in. “The consul doesn’t know, there hasn’t been an official messenger, but our network says Caesar’s _dead_ —that courier stormed his fortifications and—”

“How do we arrange a mourning procession?”

“What? We’re not even supposed to know…Oh. _Oh_.” She rushed to the side of the bed, hands hovering over the priestess’s veil, tucked over her face.

“She went gently,” Aquilina said, holding her as she turned away.

***

The streets were silent but for the wailing, citizens standing back from the procession, the contingent guarding the wall staring down from their perches. Veil and robe coated in ash, Aquilina lead the priestesses across the city, part of her cries triumph at Caesar’s death, part fear at what would follow. Lanius had never stepped foot in Flagstaff, yet his shadow set terror stalking its streets.

Beside her, Drusa cried grief for Septima, for the loss of a guiding hand, no matter how bloodstained.

Aquilina knelt at the great arched gates of Flagstaff, a ragged messenger on the road before her, words gone from his lips, fear in his eyes that the priestesses had known before he ever crossed the city’s border.

Looking out over the Waste before her, the walls spread above like a mantle, she swore to herself no tyrant, no self-made god, no _master_ would step through them again.


End file.
